Ben L.
Yelp
"The longest I've waited for the worse meal I've eaten".
Bravo Leura Garage, you have managed to take 1.5 hours to make 2 pasta dishes...and to put insult to injury, the pasta was awful.
We dined at Leura Garage at 7:00pm on a Friday night. We arrived before the rush, placed our order and waited. And waited. We got our entrees in about 30 minutes, that's ok - the restaurant was starting to fill up. The olives were really nice and the calamari, was just above average, but not that great. They didn't seem to be cooked long enough and were quite soggy from oil.
We sat longer, enjoying our conversation. After *more than 1 hour*, we grew tired of waiting and asked one of the wait staff "how much longer our mains would be... as we have been waiting one and a half hours?" She said we are busy but she'll find out. All this time our entrees plates are sitting in front of us (I mention this because it was another 20-25 minutes before someone decided it would be nice to clear them away).
She comes back and says "it'll be ten more minutes, and you've only been waiting one hour and ten minutes...we've been keeping track". Excuse me? What was that? Well maybe it took you 20 minutes to take our order?! Since when it is even remotely ok to correct a customer when it's been over an hour?! We sat there, annoyed, because hey... Even if they had completely forgotten about our order, it should take them ten minutes to cook pasta...right... right?? (sigh, no).
Whilst we waited we naturally began to observe the rest of the tables all looking around anxiously for their meals. We overheard the frustration of the couple sitting next to us as they were waiting for their share Beef Pie and we're also fed up of waiting. They tried to change their order to get some food quicker... But were told it's coming. When theirs arrived it was a disappointing liquid mess. It was "more a beef soup than a pie" (said the man)... I was quietly shocked and worried what our food would be like.
At this point anger and annoyance has just converted into defeated amusement. The manager must have noticed our situation / faces and said she'd take 10% off the bill. That was a good thing, but to be honest, we would have walked out then and there if we hadn't alreadywaited so long (and had a quite fear that nothing else in the region would be open). We just wanted our food!
The couple next to us got up, joked to us "good luck, hope it's worth it in the end" (as theirs clearly wasn't), and we looked at the watery dish they left and felt woe.
When our pastas finally came out my Ragu one was average at best, but a far sight better than the bland crab linguine my wife received. There is a concept in cooking pasta where you add a little bit of the pasta water into the dish to help bring it all together. This dish had so much pasta water it had lost all flavour. It tasted "like wet flour". I ate a few forkfuls of her frozen seafood, having generously given up my average Ragu like a true gentleman. If you want to see the dishes you can check out the photos.
When we got up to pay, the staff cared very little about our experience, and halfheartedly told us "sorry... but it's just that when we are full, we only have a small kitchen". What? WHAT?! You cannot infere to a customer that has had this awful experience that "Tough" is reason.
It's a Friday night! of course you'll be busy. You take bookings. I don't think it's remotely acceptable to say that to a customer. Reduce your tables if your kitchen can't cope.
I walked out having paid $88 (after the discount) for what was a horrible meal, that took over 2 hours and left me completely unsatisfied. It's so disappointing to have to write something like this, but seriously I felt so angry leaving there, after what was said that I felt that people need to be warned.
Congratulations on one thing though... You've managed to prompt me to return to reviewing on Yelp. Yay. (Trust me, I don't normally write negative reviews like this unless they are warranted).
Now... perhaps other nights (and times) this place is fine, but the lousy way you handled the unacceptable delays was the issue.
I won't be coming back for a meal any time soon.
Positive notes: The olives were good, takeaway coffees during the day are good.