The Lane

So hard to write a review for this place, as one was great experience one was not. The first night we had dinner here, the food was good, the waitress good and everything went really nice and smooth. There was nothing special, but was just a pleasant experience with good food.
The next morning however, was a different story. We went for breakfast, and this is where things just went haywire. Now i work in retail/​hospitality so i get things get crazy, but i believe there needs to be some basic customer service. I ordered some oats/​muesli for breakfast and from the time of order to service was about 90min. I get it if they are busy, but they really weren’t. To be honest, by the time my breakfast came, i was ready for lunch not muesli. The biggest dissappointment for me, was the lack of acknowledgement of bad service. We didn’t get offerend a complimentary coffee or OJ, and in fact had to wait about 60min for our orange juice. I just don’t understand the delay. For me breakfast works like this: OJ, food, coffee. They just couldn’t co-​ordinate a root in a brothel on this day. We had to ask for our coffee, then just after breakfast was served (over 90min later) we had to ask for our OJ. I believe that with a stuff up this huge, we should have received some kind of discount or free drink. We walked away dissatisfied and really disappointed. If everthing goes wrong the customer needs to feel acknowledged and made to feel like if they came back the same thing wouldn’t happen again. I feel the staff just didn’t care and i would not give them my business again.

I really want to give a higher star rating here.
The Lane is kinda of three separate café/​bar/​restaurants all joined into one business, attached to, and part of, the George Hotel. We stayed at the George Hotel and decided that this would be an easy place to meet a friend for a drink.
We met up on Friday night evening and grabbed a table quite easily and got a drink from the front bar. This bar is a Cider Bar, which I don’t really drink, and their beer offerings weren’t to my tastes either, but they had a few cheap drinks offers going (cheap buckets of Corona if that’s your sort of thing). We decided that we would stay for dinner and discovered that the restaurant had much better beers available.
The dinner menu was quite extensive and they have an open area where they make wood-​fired pizzas and you can see the chefs working away on your orders. Our meals were very nice, at our table we had a salad, chicken pizza and I had the pork belly, which was great.
So, this all sounds good and we enjoyed ourselves. If my review ended here, it would probably be a four. Unfortunately we decided to return on Sunday morning for breakfast…
We grabbed a table outside for brekkie and after a little while I had to head inside to ask for a menu as nobody had come out to see us yet. We ordered coffees and orange juice as we perused the menu, and our orders were taken not too long after. So far so good, but it was all downhill from here. Our coffees took about 20 minutes to get to us and people were complaining about their wait times and a couple even left without their food coming out. Supposedly the restaurant was busy, but I had been inside to ask for a menu… it wasn’t. Half an hour later we were informed that there was a problem with the printer inside and orders weren’t being sent to the kitchen. Another couple decided it was time to go without their food.
Luckily we had nothing planned for the day and were enjoying sitting in the sun. Our orange juices finally arrived and we were told our food would be out soon. I was having poached eggs and my wife ordered porridge. Nothing tricky there.
Our food was taking a while still so as we passed an hour from ordering our food and we were edging closer and closer to this actually being lunch time, I decided to try the trusty «head to the toilet and hope your food is waiting for you when you get back» maneuver. It was! Huzzah! Although, it was brought out to us without the slightest of apologies for it taking over an f’n hour!
The breakfast was okay. There was supposed to be avocado with my eggs. It wasn’t there, but other that that, it was good. The eggs were served on little potato pancakes, which were quite tasty.
After finishing I headed in to pay the bill without it being brought out to us, because who knew how long that could take? It was still not that busy inside and there were four staff members milling about behind the bar. I’d had enough and couldn’t be bothered causing a fuss, so I paid my bill, once again without an apology for it taking so long.
I give breakfast a 1 and I’m nearly tempted to leave my overall rating at that, but the dinner experience nudges this into a 2. Just.