homestead brewery

lovely location, decent beer, average service and lousy food.
the food, rather than being brought to a customerstablewas placed on a sidetablenear the bar with a number beside it. customers are given an estimated time of arrival and urged to check said sidetablearound then for thier food.
cue food going missing, taken by other customers, arriving early and being allowed to cool to room temperature over a half hour. food orders arriving piece meal and re-orders a plenty due to mix ups and dissatisfied customers.
less than hygenic.
as to personal experience, my wife and i ordered a medium rare scotch fillet with a mango cheesecake dessert for myself. she selected the masala chicken and chia creme brulee for herself.
the desserts arrived well before the main meal and we're consequently sent back to the kitchen. her chicken masala was less than flavourful with a half cup of hardend rice, while my steak was more well-done than medium rare, with a delightful (sic) side of cold vegetables.
we will not be returning.

we went here at the weekend for birthday family lunch. food was average and overpriced. fish was overcooked and we got very little meat on the pizza.
customer service was shocking. the lady at the cashier can not handle when we complained that we ware not told that we only have atablefor 90 minutes when we made a booking by phone. the lady who at the counter seems she does not care. she just want us to pay and leave. when we addresssed again the issue as we did not get proper respond. she got annoyed and said she said 'ive got your name and number, i will block you!'. we were shocked. never get treated poorly like that before. we were paying more than $200 and the service that we received was worse than mcdonalds. i think she might be the manager. the birthday lady was quite upset because of this.
if you do not want your special occassion to be ruined, i suggest do not come to this place. i strongly do not recommend this place.

w and i enjoyed lunch here today. they couldn't seat us as soon as we got there, but texted within 10 minutes with atableready. we shared the rich and grainy bread and butter, and the togarashi squid to start. both were very nice. for mains, w had the pulled pork sliders with homestyle chips, which he enjoyed. i had the black bean burger with paprika chips and chipotle aioli. the bun was soft and sweet, the beany patty was well-textured and flavoured. the chips were good too. we finished with the praline, passionfruit and chocolate dessert - tasted nice but seemed a bit too small to be charging $16. staff were very friendly and the place had a good atmosphere and was very busy.

off to the valley for lunch last week we dropped in to one of our favourite casual eating houses – homestead brewery at mandoon estate. it was a pleasant sunny day and the place was crowded inside and out on the decking looking over the vines. we managed atableby the open doors so got the best of both worlds.

i had a great lunch at homestead brewery with friends. this place was packed out on a sunday but the atmosphere was lovely and welcoming.

food was great- ordered the fish and chips which was flavourful but slightly oily. others on mytableenjoyed their meals. i had a taste of the sirloin steak and onion rings, delicious but slightly undercooked for medium rare.

i appreciated the wonderful and attentive staff who made an effort to check on us regularly.

went on sat night in a group of 4. had to wait about 5 - 8 mins to be seated as they have a wait sign, which would be fine but its wasn't particularly busy & there were staff in front of me waiting to take the order of atablewho obviously haven't decided yet. why not say you'll give them a few more minutes and sit the people standing waiting? small nit pick however. service by the rest of the staff i couldn't fault and the location is stunning, however the food really lets this place down. i order lamb with pine nuts and received what seemed like an entire tin's worth of chickpeas and almonds.  if you've ran out of pine nuts that's fine but don't substitute without informing the customer or hoping they don't know the difference and try to make up for it with tinned sup par products.partner ordered the $40 sirloin which came out looking wafer thin, anaemic, full of fat & gristle and served with limp greasy chips.  not good at the best of times but you're charging $40???  not on.another person in our group ordered the fish and chips.  this came out with a limp salad on the side which i asked to be replaced as had either wilted under a heat lamp or had been out for a fair while (which they did, no problems) and the fish was actually really nice, just let down by the limp chips again.last person in our group ordered the fish pie which we all agreed was the best thing brought to our table, however, 2 cauliflower florets and 5 green beans does not a side salad make.  in fact it was almost insulting to put it on there - just leave it off if that's all your serving.its a shame as this place has potential but overpriced mediocre food will see me not inclined to return.

i sincerely wish homestead brewery was better, particularly given that the other swan valley breweries are also pretty poor, but unfortunately it has fallen completely flat.

we visited homestead brewery about a month ago with our young daughter, my sister, brother in-law and their two adult children. mr doe called prior to see if we could book for sunday lunch and was told bookings were for groups of 10+ only and they recommend arriving between 11am and midday to secure a table. following their recommendation we arrived at 11am and asked a male staff member for a table, he disappeared for a couple minutes before taking us to atableand seating our group.

we proceeded to order a variety of dishes and i'll keep my critiques to our food only and say it was very average; pizza was soggy with the base undercooked in the centre and the octopus in the octopus and chorizo dish overcooked and chewy although the flavours in the dish overall were good. they did serve some excellent olives though i'm not sure that's enough of a saving grace. mr doe and i also shared a chai creme brûlée which was terrible, curdled custard is not nice at all and inexcusable in a professional kitchen.

around three quarters of the way through our meal a female waitress approached us and told us we needed to move half of our party from thetablethey were seated on (as we were seated across two adjoined tables) claiming that we had removed the reserved sign for the table. we explained that we'd not removed anything and had been seated at thistableby another staff member. without a word the waitress turns around, walks off and returns with the male manager in tow. let me make it apparent when i say as a diner i have never been treated so poorly as by the ill-mannered staff at homestead brewery, the manager was incredibly rude and proceeded to accuse us of removing the reserved sign from thetableand tell us that we needed to hurry up and leave. he was again told that we had removed nothing and were seated at thetableby his staff member. only after demanding a detailed description of the offending staff member which was provided did he huff off to verify that this was correct. we were not rude or confrontational with the staff over the situation just slightly incredulous at the rudeness and that they expected us to up and leave over their mistake when we were not finished eating. we received no apology from the manager for his appalling behaviour.

what really made me cranky though is that after watching the waitress move tables around for the reservation in question that a party of four sat down on the reservedtablewhen they'd refused to take a booking for a party of eight. unsure why the double standards exist at this establishment? either take bookings or don't but whichever way homestead need to manage their processes better.

based on the abysmal service and below par food i wouldn't personally return to homestead brewery.

location — 4
parking — 2
food — 2
pricing — 2
service — 1
overall — 2 out of 5

beautiful grounds, but very overpriced. i've visited homestead brewery on 3 occasions now. the building and grounds are beautiful and it is certainly what the swan valley was missing. however it is very overpriced for the servings you receive. i was appalled at my $15 dessert last night. the sizing was tiny. it was yummy, but nothing to be wowed at, which i wouldn't of minded except for what i had paid. there is notableservice, which is what you expect in a bar, but how can they justify the cost of the meals/drinks especially when their mandoon restaurant "a semi private dining room with 5 star service"charges the same amount for dessert. early on in the evening when we ordered our wine, we had two wine buckets on our table, which left very little room for our food so i asked for a wine bucket stand. i was told where i could locate one, rather than the bar staff going to get it and bringing it over. again when we ordered our desserts we were told where we could go and locate some cutlery. homestead if you don't want to do anytableservice and expect your customers to set their own table, then you need to lower your prices.

food was great. good choices on the menu. beers are great, i got the tasting selection. we went on a busy day and trying to find atablewas hard, and the door staff weren't very helpful, they just left us wandering.

uncomfortable. although the food was "okay", i wouldn't rave about it and it certainly wasn't cheap. on a very hot perth afternoon, the beer and water were not cold enough and although they had misters spraying water, certainly none of it was going in our direction. there were no fans, and no one even seemed to be all that sure of ourtablenumber. the "help yourself" cutlery was devoid of knives at one end and forks at another.
if they put some fans on the verandah i might go back.

left dissapointed. i have been here three times now. the first time for breakfast which was fabulous, the place the food and the staff. i rushed home and told all my friends to go there. however my second and third visits were not so enjoyable.

last satruday 8/11 we took our daughter and her family for lunch. sitting outside in the garden was lovely, the surroundings are great, you feel like you are in margret river. but i was very disappointed that you could only order food from the deli shop, and not from the main bar area. i enquiried why and they said that it was too hard for the staff to runtableservice out to that area, ok it's a large area, but then they gave me a buzzer to go and collect my food or should i say part of my food when it was ready, why can't they do that for the main restaurant too. anyhow the food came at different times and was very expensive and sub standard most of it went in the bin.

last night we went for dinner for a friends birthday in the bar area and again dissapointed. there was notableservice and the menu was very limited, steak and chips, fish and chips etc. and not too cheap. fine for lunch but not so much for dinner.

overall the complex is lovely and the staff are very friendly and helpfull although hold into your glass if you haven't quite finished as they will whip it away. i feel they haven't quite worked out their menu's or customer service yet. breakfast i would recommend and i will go back for a drink but maybe not for dinner or lunch, at least for a while anyway.

still hungry.. we came along to homestead with all the family and were seated outside as there was supposedly nothing inside when there was. scenery was lovely. kid friendly for those who have them.
it's surprising that there's notableservice considering the prices of the food. you have to go up to the bar and order. staff were friendly though and pleasant.
i ordered the burger and chips. my partner had the fish and chips.
i will never pay $23 for a mcdonalds cheeseburger sized burger again. so not worth it. however it did taste nice. but for the cost of something so small...no. i ended up finishing off the spaghetti the kids were given to feel as if i ate something.
the fish and chip serving was also pretty small especially when paying $28 for it. what a rip off.
if you don't mind paying through the nose for nice tasting food with your family and kids, as there is a kids area...then good to go here and the pretty surrounds.
but if you're expecting a decent pub size feed for the prices you're paying...don't expect it. you might want drive thru on the way home to feel like you ate a meal.

teething issues.... as another user pointed out the friendly staff and majestic grounds was let down by disorganisation and miscommunication during busy times.

being put on a waiting list for an hour and a half for atableand then to be told the kitchen was closed isn't a good look. it's a shame because the food genuinely looked good. hopefully things will improve in the coming months as this place has a lot of potential.

beer tasting at arrival, the girl was really helpful. we dropped name for atableand was informed for 60mins waiting, so we had a glass of beer and went to their garden area and waited.
60mins later, checked again and still threetableahead and 20mins more waiting. fair enough, it was busy day.
20mins later, i could find four empty tables so asked a manager if we could grab a table. he answered two groups were ahead, even on his name lists, groups after us were allocated. so i pointed out where the tables were available at the time then he led us to one table.
we thought finally we could order... then we were told "kitchen was closed 15mins ago."
how bad service. we wasted our time. i could wait for atableif they are really organised for the busy day, but manager should know when kitchen closed even it would be accidentally early close. no excuse even you are recently open.