Comme Kitchen

9 Highly Recommended

Food  9      Ambience  9      Service  9      Value  9     

The menu is plentiful and delightful, snails, beetroot, duck confit and sweetbreads are all featured and I struggle to choose so I go with the road completely untravelled, snails! Never tried before but the new foodie in me is open to try anything once!.

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Dec 17, 2011 

5.3 Average

Food  6      Ambience  7      Service  5      Value  3     

If you’re not in a suit or corporate attire, you’re out of place. Its much the same on Fridays but the corporate attire is replaced with the dressy casual acceptable for the “casual clothes Fridays” that many companies have.

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Nov 27, 2011 

7 Recommended

Food  7      Ambience  6      Service  9      Value  6     

Wonderful and helpful service. Staff were engaging and interested we have a good dining experience. Liked the mains chicken dish ordered but entree was ok.

Mar 26, 2011 

6.8 Recommended

Food  8      Ambience  5      Service  8      Value  6     

Like most reviews about Comme I have read I too found the attitude of the staff (females especially)very strange. Please ladies,remember you are in the service industry and you are there to serve the customer and try and be helpful,not pushy,rude or indignant. However the food was excellent (Scallops for entree and Angus beef for main. Wife had the Salmon). Room is actually dull,not exactly what we were expecting but in the end the food overides this. Our waiter was a young bloke who was excellent and didn't miss a beat all night.Good votes for the food and our waiter,average votes for the room and nothing given for the two women who made the room as cold as their personality.

Jan 16, 2011 

5 Average

Food  7      Ambience  5      Service  1      Value  7     

Terrible attitude and Service! I had a business lunch at Comme just before Christmas and was appalled by the attitude and service of the floor and front of house restaurant staff. From the moment we were greeted, to the lack of explanation around the daily specials and menu to the general lack of any personaility whatsoever from any of the staff that served us, Comme was a let down.

The food was actually very good in terms of quality and price, however, the staff ruined the experience and lunch. I will never return and have never left feedback at any restaurant before. That is how bad the restaurant staff are!

Jan 11, 2011 

6.5 Recommended

Food  7      Ambience  7      Service  6      Value  6     

A bit disappointed. I was expecting a very lavish meal in beautifully decorated surroundings (the reviews I read informed me this would be the case). It is nice inside and there are a few items of interest (eg the cellar) but I couldn't see how it was that much more impressive than many other restaurants or bars in the city. We had dinner on a Saturday night and the restaurant was only half full and the bar was basically empty.

Our first waiter was rude and slow and then just disappeared, we got a new waiter who apologized for the rudeness of the last waiter and did a better job. Very strange. I enjoyed the food, but no desserts appealed, so skipped it. I left feeling satisfied with my meal, having chosen the steak which came with a big side of chips, my friend, chose the rabbit and was not quite as satisfied with his main, but the sides we ordered and a second helping of bread helped fill the gap.

Nov 12, 2010 

4 Below Average

Food  5      Ambience  7      Service  1      Value  3     

Terrible Terrible Terrible service. I understand that they were understaff but it felt as if it was our fault for making them work! The waitress checked about a half a dozen times whether we had finished our food and even once said audibly to our table 'Not done yet!'. By the end of the night, she made it very obvious that she was annoyed with us.

The food was fine, but not outstanding for the prices they were charging. I could have easily found a better restaurant with better food and much better service with the same price range and be happy to pay for it. She certainly ruined the whole experience for us! Unfortunately, for the management and chefs, we won't be going back.

Apr 30, 2010 

8.3 Highly Recommended

Food  10      Ambience  9      Service  5      Value  9     

The food here is gourmet portions but oddly enough you leave feeling full, due to the produce being spot on and the flavours being rich. I tried the duck and was highly impressed. We decided to skip entree with the intention if still hungry we'd go a dessert. Well even if we were not that hungry the dessert menu was too good to turn our noses up at. I had the creme brulee with pears. I'm a big fan of pears regardless but the creme brulee was the best I've ever eaten, the top was just perfect and the portion size was spot on. Only down side was the spoon was a little too big for the tiny bowl.

This is a restaurant within a very trendy drinking hole. The style of the building adds a lot of character and 'fanciness' to the experience. You'd never really guess behind the doors in a rather tiny room there is some seriously good fine dining going on. The room is quite dark but every little touch adds to the ambience, from the beats coming through from the bar, the hanging lights, the random sized tables, the bread station and the glass doored wine cellar.

I'm not overly a fan of staff being in your face nor do I like being neglected, although a happy medium sounds fussy it's surely not too hard to perfect. The staff here did not seem too busy yet although they knew their gig they were not overly keen on keeping it all going. We were given about 20 minutes to ponder the dessert menu and when we wanted to pay we pretty much had the bill thrown at us.

A fantastic experience that could only be improved by some fine tuning of what appears to be a very uncommitted staff.

Apr 24, 2010 

4.3 Below Average

Food  5      Ambience  6      Service  1      Value  5     

Had the weirdest bad experience at dinner. Ordered the saltbush lamb (high quality lamb) for my main. The waiter put down a plate with two slices of lamb and informed me there was veal sweetbread there too (offal). I was stunned and asked if the offal had been on the menu and he said no. With no further explanation he left.

So since this offal was being forced on me I tried a bite, my friend tried a bite and as most people would react to sweetbreads we did not like it. I ate the lamb and left the offal. When another waitperson came to take the plates I politely said to her I didn't know why I had been given offal when I did not order it. I asked if the chef had run out of lamb. She offered no explanation whatsoever and did not offer to find out. Just left.

When I got the bill I could not believe I was still charged the full $34 for the dish. It's only because we had to leave in a rush and we got a discount because of an Entertainment Book promotion that I did not argue over it. But we had got the bill before the staff would have known we were going to get a discount. No tip left of course.

The overall impression my group of three had of this place was that half the dishes we had were good and the other half just ok. (3 entrees, 3 mains and 2 desserts.) My friend was disappointed in her tiny serve of cheese souffle which was a couple of cms across though it did have a beautiful sauce.

But this bizarre 'offal incident' certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, both literally and figuratively!

Added note: Giving customers different food to what they ordered seems to be this place's trademark. A friend has told me when she was at Comme she also got something totally different to what she ordered and the waiter argued with her over it.

Mar 06, 2010 

5.3 Average

Food  6      Ambience  3      Service  7      Value  5     

Arrive for dinner to see the bar pumping. A good sign. Look promisingly up the large staircase, expecting to be swept up to the old dining room, only to find that dinner is only served on the ground floor, out back under the stairs, with the din of the bar making dinner conversation nigh on impossible. A very bad sign.

Service was usually attentive, polite, informed and engaging. However, an (admittedly expensive $300) bottle of oxidised wine was eventually exchanged, though not without some insistance, which was churlish given the amount already spent/consumed by this time (over $2200).

Early bar snacks were uniformly excellent, salt cod balls, capocollo and gruyere croquttes, fried confit chicken thighs, chicken terrine. The rillettes were lacking in seasoning. The rabbit was excellent, as was the bavarois of shallots with artichoke cannelloni.

Steak was pedestrian, served with too much external fat, and without the requisite outer firmness, slightly charry quality one encounters at the best steakhouses. Tarte tatin similarly uninspiring. I found the tables cramped, especially when sitting on the banquette, and given we were under the stairs, the feeling was quite claustrophobic.

I had expected to dine in one of Melbourne's great dining rooms. Ultimately disappointing.

Dec 13, 2009