Scope Mount Stromlo

Interesting to see so many people say the service is bad, I had a similar experience a few months ago and now after reading this I don’t think it was a one-off because they just had a bad day or didn’t like the look of us. Nice food and view but terrible staff. We arrived and they didn’t want to sit us. So we sat down ourselves. But then nobody took our order, so we had to go up and ask them to. Drinks didn’t take too long to arrive but the waiter spilt coffee on the saucer and the table when he plonked the cup down, didn’t even say anything. I’m not one of those people who whines of there isn’t amazing service (I generally like to be left alone and don’t like hovering staff asking every 2 minutes if everything is ok) but these guys couldn’t even do simple things like take an order! I think they need to hire some new people

I went here yesterday for breakfast with my family, I booked on Thursday as I wasn’t sure if bookings were a requirement or not. I called up made a reservation for three and the girl on the phone took my booking, then the next morning was told that someone else was coming so called again to add to the table and was told that wasn’t a problem. So far so good.

I arrived at the cafe; there was enough parking even though it was quite busy up there.

The cafe was busy and bustling and when I spoke with one of the waitresses and told her I had a reservation she checked the book, and lo and behold – despite giving my details out twice earlier that week – my details weren’t there!

Nevertheless, I was apologised to profusely and in a matter of a few minutes she’d been able to pull away a table from another group and set up a squashed table with four settings.

The rest of my group arrived and we waited about ten minutes before someone gave us menus. We waited then another ten minutes for someone to take our order.

Fifteen minutes after that we received our drinks.

And then another fifteen minutes later we finally received our breakfast orders. Which were lukewarm. They were however, presented very nicely and tasted delicious. Although it would have been nice to have a big breakfast option on the menu. Only one dish had bacon in it.

Overall, I wouldn’t recommend this place. The wait staff are not efficiently trained, they do not sweep the room with their eyes to see if anyone needs attention and as someone above mentioned, you have to crash tackle the staff to get them to do things for you.

I considered that maybe they were understaffed but the kitchen is too small for too many people walking in and out, I think it’s just poorly trained staff working here. Scope needs a higher standard of workers.

The food is nice however. More bacon on the menu would be nicer though.

I am going there for lunch late next week (not my idea!) but will report back.

It does sound like a bit of staff training is required. And $25 for coffee and cake for two – it would want to be very good indeed. As in, you tell your friends about it.

We will see. They will soon go broke if customers (who have to go out of their way) are treated badly and overcharged.

In reply to Bennop who wrote

‘I wouldn’t expect the full menu after 3 o’clock at most places.’

Thats fine, but when you are told that only coffee and cake is available and then seeing someone who arrived after us being served with a nice looking toasted sandwich is a bit odd. Even more strange was the fact that we were given the full menu to begin with, then told only coffee and cake being served. It was two minutes past 3 folks, for goodness sake!

I just noticed the other recent post which wasn’t there when I wrote mine. Sad, Red Belly Black used to be very busy at lunchtimes, I think we booked in advance because we knew you couldn’t assume there’s be a table if you just turned up, and they seemed to cope fine with the crowds.

Very disappointing to read the last two posts from May last year and then this month. Seems rather than settling in and sorting out minor issues it’s gotten worse? We used to like going up there for lunch when it was Red Belly Black and I always thought one day a similar experience will be possible again. Is there anything in the exhibition space these days? Shame the planetarium from the Dickson club wasn’t moved there as suggested on Stateline. Great lpcation still waiting to fulfill its potential. 🙁

Sheffield said :

Was there recently on a week day, arrived at two minutes after 3 to be informed that the only thing being served was coffee and cake! was handed a menu anyway. Table was dirty and cleaned whilst sitting there even though there was only 5 people sitting in the cafe, service was terrible – we seemed to be a bother to the staff, the two iced coffees were not even ‘ice cold’ I have tasted better at Mc Donalds. The place also smelt very stale, oh and the two pathetic cakes were pretty average, they obviously ‘zapped’ them in a microwave to freshen them up. We left pretty quickly, the hit on the pocket was 25 bucks for two iced coffees and two bits of cake! Even when paying I had to tell the same girl that served me what I had ordered as she could not remember ! I will never return! Gee what ever happened to the ‘hospitality’ in the industry.

I wouldn’t expect the full menu after 3 o’clock at most places.

I have been to Scope several times and experienced similar things to HC and Shefield. Went there one time with a group of 6 or so and there was one other similar group already there and that was it and the waitress spent 10 mins deciding where to seat us. Then it took another 10 mins to get a menu and then just about had to resort to crash tackling the waitress to get her to take our orders.

Then the food and drink started coming out and one of the dishes that was supposed to be hot was luke warm and then they forgot to bring orders for a couple of people, again had to just about crash tackle the waitress to ask her where the orders were.The missing orders turned up after everybody else had already finished theirs (didn’t want the luke warm food to get any colder).

Like I said, I’ve been there probably a dozen times with different groups of people, giving Scope the benefit of the doubt, thinking they were just having a bad day but the service really hasn’t got any better. So I have voted with my feet and won’t be going there again and reccommend my friends do the same..

Sad really, the cafe could be so good if the service was better and it used to be before the bushfire with the previous owners and staff.

I have no connection to owners or staff either past or present just an (ex) customer.

Was there recently on a week day, arrived at two minutes after 3 to be informed that the only thing being served was coffee and cake! was handed a menu anyway. Table was dirty and cleaned whilst sitting there even though there was only 5 people sitting in the cafe, service was terrible – we seemed to be a bother to the staff, the two iced coffees were not even ‘ice cold’ I have tasted better at Mc Donalds. The place also smelt very stale, oh and the two pathetic cakes were pretty average, they obviously ‘zapped’ them in a microwave to freshen them up. We left pretty quickly, the hit on the pocket was 25 bucks for two iced coffees and two bits of cake! Even when paying I had to tell the same girl that served me what I had ordered as she could not remember ! I will never return! Gee what ever happened to the ‘hospitality’ in the industry.

Hmm, disappointment is the clearest adjective to describe our lunch here on the weekend.

The service wasn’t that bad, but it certainly wasn’t good. As an example, the limited menu exclaims “enjoy a beer or wine” with your meal. However, no wine list was provided with our menu, which makes it a bit hard to know what to select when the wait staff asks for your drink while ordering.

Okay, no big deal, but the waitress handled this very poorly. When ordering we said we’d like a glass of wine but weren’t sure what was available.

“Well, what do you want; red or white?!” came the snappy reply before the waitress clicked and suggested she bring the wine list (on a blackboard) over to us.

I had fish’n’chips which were pretty crappy it has to be said. I know Canberra is not a great place for fish, but really, when McCain’s is the overwhelming thought you’re having while eating out, it’s not great.

As I said, it wasn’t that bad, but we found no compelling reason to rush back. Which is a shame, because the unique view and isolated location could work very much in their favour. As it is that isolation just makes it an inconvenience.

Maybe it’s best placed to cater for simple cake and tea requests, rather than lunch. Hopefully we just caught them on a bad day.