Cafe Paparazzi — Restaurant in Adelaide

If you have dietary requirements or allergies I would strongly recommend against this restaurant

Terrible experience

Long review This is the second review I have ever written.

Without Sam and Mary there they place does not function properly We have gone to this restaurant many times and every time Sam and Mary are working everything is great. The last four times we have gone ( over the spand of a year or more) Sam wasn’t there and everything falls apart.

I will stick to tonight’s incident Tonight my family and I (10 people) booked a reservation. We went there for a birthday chosen by the birthday boy. Everything was fine up until the food.

At the table we had one person order a salad (pumpkin I believe) as the vegan option and a side of rice. 9 plates come out 1 after another except the salad and rice. Which after waiting 45- 1 hour for all the food because they had only 1 chef working ?? With only 1 other table and 4 Uber guys there. They send out her food and it had feta cheese in it with no side of rice. After explaining that she ordered the vegan option they take it back and they then advise us they have no rice.. after we waited that long for food they told us.. they then take the salad back to her after I could see them huddled in the kitchen talking about the salad. Now I’m assuming that he didn’t use any gloves and picked through this salad with his fingers ( with a pandemic going on ) and sent this salad back to the table for her to look through and still find feta in it after they advised us that the salad was remade.

Salads are cheap and take the least amount of time to make. After advising that she can’t eat it already they didn’t even make her a new salad. Now we do care that they stuffed it up 2 times and couldn’t even advise us of the rice issue earlier so we could have possibly ordered something different. the thing that was shocking is that if she was allergic to dairy and they just picked it out and sent it back to her and something worse could have happened. And to top it off I could hear the chef getting angry over them messing up her meal. I walked to the toilet which is beside the kitchen to hear him mouthing off about “vegans”.

They discount a lot to make up for it which is okay but the point is that the dis-organisation could lead to something worse and the lack of care in the kitchen is just reckless.

The staff we very nice but the chef was talking loudly about it and also stood there from the kitchen and stared at our table..

We did like this restaurant but only Sam and his Mary make it good because they actually seem to care...

We are from the country and used to come here every time we visited as it is near Mum's nursing home. Maybe new owners ..not sure ... but this time we arrived found a seat and waited for about 15 minutes while the only girl working cleared and cleaned all other tables before seeing if we would even like coffee or water...during which time I went to the loo... they were disgusting... I couldn't go in there and went back to the table ...trying to order bacon eggs which comes with tomato... I asked to add some sliced avocado.. to which the girl replied it comes with tomato .. you have already... 4 times later .. still not confident we had it right.. my wife ..who is endlessly patient.. then had a similar experience with her orders.. she brought us some water and then headed off to I assume make us coffe.. all the while shooting us " side eye " and talking to one of the kitchen staff loudly across the room in an Asian language whilst referencing us with stares..so clearly about us.. We left before even getting our coffee ..what a place. I am the not racist in any way shape or form and welcome all new members of our country...after all we are all from somewhere else.. but if you have front of house staff ..please please ensure they can speak and understand enough English to the job. I told one of the other more senior staff that they just lost a customer who had been coming weekends fir the last 4 years and he looked at me and shrugged...not even sure he understood...

I went there once with my partner in previous years, the food was okay but the service was terrible.

Having a dietary requirement- which was at the time newly diagnosed (coeliac disease) was mocked by the waiter who felt like it was their place to infer their partners personal experiences as the ‘ gold standard’.

I felt like it was a chore to ask the chef to take extra care. And they made misogynistic jokes when taking my order to my partner about being ‘ high maintenance and choosy’.

Ruined the experience for my partner and I, and later made a formal complaint due to getting sick from the meal and leaving the establishment crying.

I have never been back and am disappointed to say that it’s one of the only restaurants in Adelaide I will never return to.

Edit: this happened 2 years ago, and I did contact the cafe after the incident on Facebook, I just never got around to leaving a review it was around mid year - June ish ?. The issue may be resolved now, as some time has passed since I have been there. ( I can’t reply to a reply on my...