Thursday night, walking past Exotik Latin on King St, Newtown. The menu looked interesting, so we thought we'd give it a try without checking what people had said online. Big Mistake.

Definitely had a lot of minor red flags like the staff ignoring us at the door, server going on his smoko after we asked for a minute to decide right outside the open window, the beer cocktail having maybe 2 out of the 6 ingredients you'd normally expect, food coming out cold and dry and was served about 15 mins apart despite being the same course. Also we're pretty sure the fried plantain they served was actually just a banana.

All this for a restaurant with more staff than tables was quite bizzare, but as someone who's in the service industry I kept pressing on, giving them the benefit of the doubt, everyone has their days.

Go up to pay, didn't think the total was adding up but anyway just asked for a receipt and took off. Lo an behold, we'd got got. First of all, we were charged $3 on top of the menu prices for the drinks, and no we didn't ask for the top shelf stuff, there was actually no choice provided to us. 2% card surcharge, okay fair enough. 2% service fee, bit laughable considering the service but not out of the scope. And then the icing on the cake: 10% system surcharge!

Normally I don't care if I have a bad experience or if I get hit with smaller undeclared surcharges but this was just not right. They're straight up lying and stealing and for what, the menu prices were already exorbitant for the quality (did I mention the avocado on one of our plates was still in its shell with the sticker).

The whole experience was awful and they're doing this everyday to unsuspecting people and getting away with it. I thought about leaving a bad review but I don't think that'll do anything. If I had checked the reviews where other people said the same things, I wouldn't have gone in but they are in a high traffic area and they might still keep getting away with it. What should I do? Add on to their bad reviews? Email the owners? Would the ACCC be interested?