Budapest is a little bit out of the city in Elsternwick just a stones throw from Elsternwick Station
Budapest Restaurant and Palinka Bar, Melbourne, Australia
A typical suburban restaurant was doing a good trade when we arrived and we were shown to our table quite quickly.
Things started off well, we got the menus just after we were seated, but the service started to go down hill quickly. Our table just didn’t seem all that important to the servers and we were attended to almost as an afterthought.
We did manage to get our meal and drinks ordered which were delivered in due course.
I will say that the food was pretty good. I had the Giant Wiener Schnitzel and it was perfectly cooked with a golden crunchy crust.
However, the service was not good:
- The salad turned up late
- It took a while to get someones attention when we wanted another drink
- When we did get to order another drink they sat on the bar for 10 minutes before someone bothered to deliver them to our table
- We asked for the bill which never came
Honestly, the service here was very poor. The staff seemed to preoccupied with what looked like a birthday party on one of the other tables to the detriment of the other patrons. The person who I think was the manager just stood by that table for 90% of the time and didn’t even think of the other diners.
After waiting for the bill that never came we wandered upto the bar to settle up. The manager pulled himself away from the birthday party to finally give us the bill. I’m always amused in restaurants where the service is poor that when you swipe your credit card they hold the terminal at you to enter a tip but, no, I don’t tip for crap service. I think he honestly thought their service was good – maybe they should go and try service at other restaurants and compare.
Foodwise I think Budapest was good. Servicewise Budapest was bad, very bad.