2 reviews about The Arthouse

verified email - 30 Jan 2015

I have been here several times. At first I liked it, even tho' their coffee is nice, the price for a Flat White / coffee in general is one of the dearest in the shopping centre, but ... I can't recommend it. I've been there twice in the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, we were meeting 2 friends there at 10.30am for coffee. When arrived, several tables had a reserved sign on them. I didn't know they reserved tables and they said they had several tables reserved for lunch ... I looked at my watch again. We were shown to a table for 4 - fine as our friends had not shown and three times within 3 mins we were asked if we wanted to order something. I told each of them we were waiting for 2 friends ... don't the wait staff talk to each other / see what's happening around the restaurant? One friend turned up about 3-4 mins after we sat down and I rang to see where the 4th friend was ... she was on her way. By then we had been asked by the same staff again did we want to order. Then a waitress put a reserved sign on our absent friend's seat. I said we are waiting for her, she will be here in a minute. The waitress replied that she is "reserving the table for others who are coming for lunch at 12 but you'll be gone by then". Wow ... kind of presumptuous .. what if we changed our minds ? We ordered our coffees and when mine came, they delivered it in a take away cup on a china saucer. I looked at it and told her I was drinking the coffee here, not taking it away and wanted it in a china cup. I was a little blown away by that and our friends were too. Why the heck would we sit down to have a coffee and be the only ones to get it in a take away cup? Because we didn't order food ? New coffee in a cup came out. All through our coffee and chat, we had about three waitress approach us and ask if there was anything else we wanted to order and occasionally a waitress would walk, stop, look at our table and walk away. Now I'm all for good customer service but this definitely made us feel uncomfortable and as if we were being pushed out of the cafe as we had only ordered coffee, not coffee and food (which is expensive ... eg, Soy latte in a mug, Cappacino in a mug and Turkish bread/raisin toast will cost about $15.20 I think). Our friends felt so uncomfortable, they don't want to go back. A few days ago, just two of us returned. We sat down and were totally ignored for the best part of 10 minutes. The other issue is that they have a loyalty card for coffee drinkers with about 8 icons on either side of the card. Don't expect them to punch all on one side ... they don't. They punch on either side so it will take longer to get your reward coffee...cheap on their part unless you're awake to what they do and ask them to punch only on one side of the card. Will we return ... not likely - there are a lot of coffee shops in Narellan to choose from.

verified email - 24 Sep 2014

Every time I visit I'm disappointed. Last time it was because a) they closed the kitchen though it was hardly late. We were only there for afternoon tea so it didn't affect our plans but it seemed unprofessional for an open cafe to not be serving food... and b) I felt like I should have consulted my bank manager before purchasing that mini cupcake for my toddler. The time before it was because we sat down to order something from the specials boardnoutvthe front only to be told they weren't doing specials that day. Apparently yesterday's specials had been up all day but they were not willing to cook those meals. Their customer service is lacking; not only are they unwilling to go the extra mile, they don't even seem willing to do what should be expected of them.

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