La Gondola Di Leonardo

Thank you for the most wonderful lunch to celebrate the wedding of our daughter and our new son-in-law. Delicious food, thoughtful service, kind provision for the children, great take-home cup cakes! We had a wonderful time - and I loved having my tea served in matching tea pot and cup and saucer decorated in pink roses. You helped to make a special day even more special.

I have become a regular at this charming family run restaurant. The dishes are rustic and full of flavour. The chef regularly comes out to greet customers and ask if everything is okay, which is something you don't always see. The service is warm and friendly.

Great restaurant, great authentic italain rustic cooking with an amazing service. There is nothing negative I could honetly say about this fanily run restaurant. You can see their pride in all their dishes and in the friendly service. This is fast becoming my regular!

Although it looks ok from outside I was highly disappointed by the whole experience once I'd been seated at a table.
The first warning sign (& one that I should have acted on by leaving), was when the sole waiter (the owner I presume) brought over a small plate containing limp carrot sticks & celery with a dish of Thousand Island dressing. In one fell swoop I was back in the 1970s & all the culinary delights that period entailed. At this point I became very nervous as to what I should order & my thought process was along the lines of ..."what can they not screw up". I decided to bypass the starter & go straight for a pretty safe pasta dish for my main course. My partner however was feeling a little braver & decided to order from the 'meal deal' menu.

The part baked bread rolls we were served some time before our starter arrived were tasteless & over cooked (i.e. burned)

The place was far from busy, in fact the 2 tables occupied had already eaten or had just been served their main course. Another couple had chosen the table outside. So pretty quiet for a restaurant that easily had 30+ covers.

However it still took well over 15mins for my partner’s starter of deep fried camembert to arrive. When it did we were both amazed/shocked at what arrived. But game to give anything a go we both ventured in...& were left distinctly unimpressed. The salad appeared to be drowned in salt, the camembert itself - apparently mama is to cheap to even shop at Iceland - the identikit cheese pieces appeared to have come frozen from a packet & reheated, but surely not even Iceland food is that bad is it??

Giving the starter up as a bad job, we decided that we would give the benefit of the doubt & stick around to try the main course. However after 25mins this had still not arrived - I'd only ordered pasta in a sauce & my partner a fish dish. 3 more people had arrived at the restaurant whilst we were waiting on out starter & another couple after our starter had been cleare