Squid Lips — Restaurant in Melbourne

In response to the owners responses, yes there are three sides to every story and if I was put in that situation again I would always choose to help someone in need of assistance. If that was my mother, I would only pray that someone would help her instead of humiliating her! If you read other posts about hostesses at this establishment, you will see this is not the first time a hostess has been rude to a customer and management will back up the hostess over a customers every time!

SEE PICTURE FOR OWNERS RESPONSE

The food was good we ate at the bar outside, we were there for a retirement party. It got loud and we had a baby, so we went down to the beach. I asked the bartender not to throw away my food because I was coming back. I explained to him that we were going to the Beach for a few minutes because it was too loud. When I returned, my food was gone. The bartender threw it away. I barely had any of it, but had to pay for it. Then we went to the bathroom to change my granddaughters diaper and there was an elderly lady in the bathroom who couldn’t get off the toilet, her husband was in the hallway waiting for her. She asked if we could have him come in and help her so we held the door open while he went to help her so we could let other people know not to go in. The hostess stormed in past us and started yelling at the poor man trying to help his wife and then continued by yelling at us as well. She was yelling at us saying what would you do if you were a woman trying to use the bathroom, which we were. We tried to explain to her that we were customers trying to use the bathroom and we were just trying to help them because the woman couldn’t get off the toilet and we were helping to make sure that no one else went into the bathroom. Just trying to give the poor woman, a little grace. The hostess continued yelling at us and then told us we couldn’t go in the bathroom to change the baby diaper, even though there was a changing table in the bathroom. There was foul language involved at that point on our part because the hostess would not let up. She ran and got the manager who had no interest in talking about the situation that happened only the foul language that was used after we had been thoroughly berated by the hostess who humiliated the poor woman in the bathroom. We felt so bad that her and her husband were treated with such disrespect! We were asked to leave which we gladly did and will never return! The manager handled the situation completely wrong and the couple left feeling...

Has anyone eat at the squid lips on Eau Gallie and pineapple? I have a nasty encountered with a bad experience there on Monday, July 13. My friend and I went there to eat lunch, our server an older gentleman seems to have a problem with every table he served—he had an attitude. The table in front had to ask him to take it easy on them. now he’s at our table with the menu asking us what we’d like. Since we are regular attendees we asked for the lunch special menu which is a yellow little card that have lunch and lunch special for early birds. The meals are $11.99 from 1 to 530. for some reason he didn’t want to Give us the menu and he literally got into our face to tell us that we can only order from the big menu. If not, we would not be able to order. we then asked to speak to the manager. The manager came with a print out version of the small menu and told us that she can only tell us what’s on the menu, but she cannot hand/give us the menu because it is a secret menu that is unknown to the public. I’m like, at this point you need to give us a copy of the menu so we can make our selection —so she finally went back to one of the servers that’s been there for some times /our regular server. The small lunch menu finally made it to our table—and the manager came back to the table to remind us that the menu is a secret menu —a secret menu that nobody should know . Then the older gentleman came back also, very unapologetically told us that he’s been working there for 6 months and has never seen the early bird menu—and told us we each have to buy a cold drink to get the special o the early bird menu. This never happened before— we ordered in that menu and it was never an issue. The circuit manager was worthless,—she did not handle the situation well nor put her employee in his place, very unethical, and unprofessional. We ended up leaving without having lunch and went to a nearby restaurant. Very disappointed...

2023 Experience: Updating my review and dropping from 5 stars to 2 stars. After years of good experiences at squid lips I was disappointed and disgusted by my Friday lunch. Started out good. Food was well prepared and tasty. THEN I found a HUGE piece of string in my french fries after I had eaten about half of them. I pulled it out and discretely set it aside, planning to show it to the waiter (picture attached). I didn't mention it to my wife because I didn't want to ruin her meal. I figured it was maybe kitchen twine or a thread from a towel or something. The fries tasted pretty good and having already eaten half of them I figured I had nothing to lose by finishing them. We didn't see the waiter again until we were done eating (never offered a drink refill. New cost cutting policy? It's not like it was busy. Most tables empty.) When I showed him the string and asked him to talk to the kitchen about it so someone else wouldn't get a surprise, I got virtually no reaction. My wife looked at it and said it looked like dental floss. I hadn't thought about that. EWWWWwwwww. I almost lost my lunch at that point. Paid the bill and left.

Additional thoughts. Squid lips is looking pretty run down. The chair seats in the interior dining room are in really bad shape (picture attached) and uncomfortable. The place was not very busy. Usually it is pretty full and bustling. Maybe others have been having bad experiences lately and word is getting around.

Summary of my 2023 experience: Tasty but contaminated food in a place that is showing its age (not in a graceful good way) with a server that did the minimum.

Old 5 star review, the way it used to be: Food is consistently good. Service is always attentive and friendly. Food arrives quickly and fresh / hot. Nice views from most tables....