Gemelli Italian James St — Restaurant in Brisbane City

The arrogance and attitude is real! Won’t be back…NOT worth the price tag.

Will do my best to be even-handed with this given the experience took a dive within 30s of arrival...

First time there, so walking down from the car park and through the walkway, I arrive at a big open door with ‘gemelli’ on it with two staff members just inside.

Naturally I walk in toward the two female staff members near the kitchen pass. I should have known something was up with their raised eyebrow look. They wait until I’m face to face, and politely I greet them and share my name for the booking. No welcome, instead they say, “oh, that’s the main entry over there so you’ll need to walk around”, pointing to a door less than 10 metres away from where I’m standing in the (at that stage) empty restaurant. Instead of walking me and my family across the floor, they make us walk back outside the restaurant and around to the 'main' door that we were just supposed to know about. Not the warm Italian welcome we were expecting...

To jump ahead in the story, and for context, around 45 minutes later, an attractive blonde lady makes exactly the same mistake I did and walks in the same door, this time being greeted by the male manager. After a brief exchange, he quickly escorts her across the now packed restaurant floor, leaving waiters and serving staff having to dodge the both of them as this transpires.

After sitting at the table for about 15 minutes, we had to ask for someone to come over and take a drink order...the fact that we had to ask wasn't received well; like it's our mistake the staff hadn't done their job.

From a food perspective, quality is ok, but it’s inconsistently (over)priced, and when combined with the experience and arrogance of the staff, it quickly becomes well overpriced.

I had the beef and pork ragu, which had some ok flavour but was a challenge to eat given the size of the rigatoni (see photo). No normal person is trying to fit a piece of this in their mouth along with the sauce containing large chunks of meat…this means using a knife and fork for a pasta dish which is less than ideal.

The spaghetti pescatora which mum had was very good, and was by far the standout dish. My wife had the gnocchi al forno which was not great and completely lacked flavour.

My daughter wanted pizza, but before we ordered we did some diligence on understanding the difference between the kids pizza ($27) and the adult pizza ($30). We ordered her the adult pizza which was significantly larger than the kids pizza, so an absolute stitch up on value if you make the mistake of ordering the kids pizza - joke. Naturally she didn't finish it, so we ask if we could get a pizza box for the remainder. Rather than clearing the pizza and boxing it for us out the back, the guy with red hair literally walks past and just drops an empty pizza box on the table for us to pack it up ourselves...doesn't say anything.

Throughout this entire experience we had to deal with rude, arrogant staff who are in need of some serious attitude readjustment. Short remarks to simple questions without a hint of a smile, and no resemblance to anything that a patron would call great customer service.

Overall, a bad experience and simply not worth the price. Plenty of other great quality Italian in Brisbane at a much sharper price. Don't...

We had a booking for a birthday (10 adults 2 babies) on Saturday at 5:30. Our impression of the restaurant was not great. The atmosphere was beautiful but the staff were not friendly. We were consistently told we only had a 2 hour window to eat and we felt like we were being rushed from the moment we arrived and until we left. We did not feel relaxed or welcomed. They gave us a table that did not accommodate for the 2 extra highchairs. Our children were both old enough to sit at the table and eat with the family, but they had situated them in the corner of the table where they could not even reach the table. There was no consideration that they may have needed a plate or cutlery. The icing on top to our visit was our waitress. She just did not seem like she wanted to be there. There was no “hi, how are you?” or use of manners such as “excuse me”, “let me just reach over you”, “is everything ok?”. Instead, any requests we made was greeted with attitude. I had asked for an extra plate and she replied with “you need plate? You really need a plate?” with a very condescending tone. When she came back with the plate, she just threw it on the table and walked away. Anytime we asked for something, she gave us a really annoyed and stunned look and replied back with attitude. Everything seemed too difficult including communicating. She would always reach across our faces to place and take away cutlery and plates with no "excuse me" or general courtesy. Towards the end of our dinner, our plates of food were taken away without even asking “are you finished with that?”. The sad part, was we really weren’t finished with some of our plates. As soon as it hit 7:20pm, they were rushing us out the door before we could even try to get up and leave. I was truly disappointed at the restaurant. The food may have been good, but because the experience was so unwelcoming it made the food just taste average. The cost of the meals did not match up to the experience or service...

Since its opening, I have heard very good things about Gemellis and have had a few people recommend it to me. Because of this, I was very excited when a few of my friends and myself decided to go one night to try it out.

I am displeased to say the standard of food and service I experienced was drastically below expectation.

Service for the night felt extremely rushed, our waitress wasn't very welcoming or inviting, our entrees took a considerable amount of time to come out yet our mains were brought out almost immediately after we finished our entrees.

For entree we had arancini, fritto misto (except its not mixed?), and fiori di zucca The arancini was possibly some of the worst I have ever had in my life. The inside was like mush, baby food with no texture or flavour. the Napoli served with it had to be smothered on just to make it edible. Nothing tasted seasoned.

The calamari followed a similar fate, tubes were all pink in colour (maybe the skin was just left on?) and extremely rubbery/chewy. Similar to the arancini, to my surprise nothing tasted seasoned. The rocket was just thrown on the plate with no dressing, which is fine, but since they describe it as a "salad" and not just rocket I did expect a bit more.

The zucchini flowers were definitely the best of the three. They were almost enjoyable, however, the caponata felt out of place and the flowers had a bit too much ricotta for my liking but these could be personal aspects.

Mains were pretty much the same, bland. Perhaps the kitchen ran out of seasoning that night.

Overall, it was a very disappointing night and as much as I would like to, I couldn't recommend this place to...