Grilled 118 - Carlton

My family and I had dinner (2 adults and 2 children) which started with entrées of crunchy pork spring rolls and steamed red pork buns. For our mains we had the seafood platter which consisted of whole barramundi, twelve king prawns, twelve crawfish, four swimmer crabs and calamari rings. This was all served in a hot pot over a flame, we opted for the savory sauce for the hot pot and a couple of servings of special fried rice. The seafood hot pot was fresh, flavorsome and absolutely delicious, the fried rice was very tasty and the entrees, pork buns were sweet, soft, plump full of juicy red pork and the spring rolls were crunchy and fresh with a delightful sweet dipping sauce.The service wasn’t brilliant but it wasn’t bad either considering that all tables were occupied.

•This is a great place to be for the just arrived night travellers. I and my friend arrived Melbourne at night and needed to grab an affordable decent burger for dinner. We wandered in the southern Melbourne area and found this place among other fantastic restaurants and cafes along sides of the streets. •Simple but very practicals seatings •Not too loud music •Price was affordable •The big surprise was for the great taste of the two types of burgers we ordered. Both were delicious along side with the grilled French fries which made our hungry search for quick food a success•Another surprise to me was that the water is FREE yes FREE in all restaurants in Australia.I still have plenty of time to discover more restaurants and attractions during my 3 week stay in Melbourne.

We had the seafood platter from a Groupon deal. It looked nothing like the meal displayed on the voucher. Came in a steel pot in oily flavored broth that we had to add raw cauliflower to cook and noodles. Was delivered to our table within 5 minutes of ordering. So obviously all pre cooked. Prawns bugs calamari and whole dry fish. Bug meat was brown. Needless to say we left only having eaten a couple of calamari rings and tasting the fish. I have never walked out of a restaurant before. Although my voucher stated up to $128 value they tried to charge for the cauliflower and noodles. After a phone call to manager it was agreed that I could just pay for the drinks which I was happy to do. The staff didn't seem surprised that we left . Extremely bad service as well.

My husband received a Scoopon voucher from a friend in the UK for a seafood platter at Grilled 118. We left it until the voucher's very last validity date to use it as in all honest we didn't really fancy the place! My instincts were correct, again. On arrival we were shown a menu and asked to choose between 5 sauces: spicy, Thai red, Thai green & tomato. When we asked what the spicy sauce was the waitress could only say chilli & that it was the most popular. Her command of English was poor. We were asked if we wanted rice, they charged us a $1 a bowl each! Drinks were extra of course.Looking around it was hard to decipher the menu both on the wall and on the menu card. There was more in Cantonese (I assume) than English. Clearly, targeting a Chinese audience.The food seafood platter was served in a large stainless steel 'bath' that contained a very deep oily sauce of ginger, chilli, lemongrass and probably other ingredients with a whole fish, 12 prawns in shells, lots of calamari, 8 bugs of some sort & 2 small crabs cut in half. All had been precooked. The fish was very overlooked & dry. The prawns, bugs & crabs were difficult to handle as the sauce was boiling hot, slippery & oily. We were given gloves but just one cheap thin paper napkin each. We ended up covered in oily saucy both on our hands & clothes. Repeated attempts to get more paper napkins resulted in 2/3 being given to us at a time. No finger bowl & just a small bowl for the shell, bones, skin etc. The one toilet wasn't very clean. The toilet paper had run out, there was no hand dryer nor paper towels to dry your hands on. Not what you need after such a messy, oily dinner.Overall an unpleasant meal. The food was poor quality, badly overlooked & hence flavour less as well as extremely difficult to eat. The service was negligible & any sort of conversation impossible due to the level of English spoken. We were happy to leave & even happier that after 24 hours we had not had any negative reactions to the food.We won't be back & we certainly wouldn't recommend it. In my experience anyone offering goods & services cheap via Scoopon/Groupon etc, has a reason to do so to draw in business! Buyer beware & all that.

Well worth a visit they don't hassle you to go in to eat like all the others on logon street it was a pleasure to just be able to stand and have a look at the menu before hand the food was great maybe a little slow but well worth the wait