So I decided to take my family for a nice relaxing Saturday afternoon lunch at Olinda Tea House. This would be my second time at the restaurant and my first experience was positive due to the idyllic settings amongst the greenery. After arrival, we were seated and provided with two lunch menus and a beverage menu. Lunch menu were in Chinese (understandable given we are Chinese), but I requested English menus instead. The first indication that this was not a well run restaurant was when the waiter returned and placed another two drinks menu on our table. He had obviously not checked what he was handing us and we ended up requesting the lunch menus again.
We ordered three dishes, one fried rice and two fried noodles. The food took about 35 minutes to arrive and all around us, the later arrival patrons were served first. Luckily one waiter noticed that our order appeared not to have been prepared, otherwise we would have had a longer wait. While the noodle dishes were reasonable, the fried rice dish was bland (kinda hard to do with fried rice, unless you really try). Then the waiter whispered that she would provide us with free coffee and tea after we had eaten, to mitigate our delayed meal. My wife ordered take away coffee and when that arrived, we went to the counter to pay for the food. And would you believe that the bill included the supposedly "free" coffee. I paid the bill and left without questioning the bill.
So my experience is that the restaurant is not very well run, food not as good (and more expensive than run of mill Chinese restaurant due to it location), service hit and miss. I will not return to this restaurant and will advise my friend to patronise it. read more
