OTTO Ristorante — Restaurant in Brisbane City

Last night we took our team to Otto for an end of year Christmas party. My husband and I were have been to Otto many times and it holds a special place in my heart because we went there the night we got engaged. I wanted to share the experience we had there with my team. From the beginning, we were seated, drink orders were taken, then straight into ordering meals. No one explained the menu or made recommendations. The entire experience felt rushed and not what I have had there before. Over the course of our meal drink orders were forgotten. No one checked in on our table to see how our meals were and the staff weren't very friendly. One of my team members actually made the comment to me privately saying, "I think our waiter hates me". This really upset me because I noticed the attitude too.

I was shocked at what I discovered in my main meal. It was a piece of wire!!! It had become lodged in the back of throat and I had to put my hand down my throat to get it out. When the waiter came to clear our plates, mine was still full. As they took my plate I said, "I just wanted to let you know that there was wire in my pasta". I was clearly turned off my food. This could have been a serious accident -My business partner took her 3 year old son here on Mother's Day. Imagine that was him! Yes, they did take the price of the meal off the order and offered me a new meal. But everyone was finishing their last drinks and it was too late. I felt like it was a poor attempt of rectifying the situation. A good service team would have clocked onto the fact that a full meal hadn't been touched and was sitting there while everyone else's plate was finished. This is not the service I have received in the past.

At the end of the meal, I was waiting for the bill and it wasn't coming. I had to go to the bar to ask for it. I then was pointed over there to pay. I was then told I had to pay a tip that was automatically added to the bill because we are 10+ people. I will often tip at the end of a meal, however on this occasion, we had such a poor experience and I could not believe it was added automatically.

I am really disappointed by our experience at Otto and hope this feedback can be used to provide additional training...

Myself and my fiance visited OTTO last weekend on Friday evening for our anniversary meal.We are huge foodies, Italian is without doubt our favourite cuisine and we love fine dining. The location was great, we had a lovely table overlooking the bridge which was very nice, the restaurant itself didn't really have much atmosphere and I can't really put my finger on why. We had a waiter who whilst with us was very thorough, professional and borderline dramatic which we liked, however getting his attention was extremely hard, we waited 15 minutes to be asked for a drinks order.A lady brought our drinks over and we asked if we could order food, she said our waiter would be right over, this was another 15 minutes and by this point we are starving.Finally over he comes and we order our food. Starters were great, caprese was amazing, there was a raw tuna special that was VERY good and we also ordered some meats which were good too.there was a good 10-15 minute wait between starters and main, when the main arrived - it was less than average. We ordered the tortellini and the lobster spaghetti... whilst the lobster itself was tasty... the rest of the entire dish and the tortelini were really underwhelming. The tortelini was very siggy and tasted like a few pieces of cheap steamed dumplings with a 'gravy' that tasted of nothing but oil and salt and the spaghetti was so boring and tasteless. My fiance tried for 20 minutes to order another drink but we couldn't catch anybody's attention and had no check back to see how the meal was. When our mains were cleared and we managed to order another drink we were also brought the desserts menu and reeeeally fancied one of them so we were going to order one dessert, a couple of limoncellos and an espresso martini for myself... nobody came back. We sat there for at least 20 minutes and ended up giving up on the idea and walking to the till/host area to pay where nobody (four staff standing round) asked if everything was okay or gave us a warm thank you and goodbye. Seems to me too many chiefs and not enough Indians as all the staff seemed to be more interested in chatting to each other than paying attention to their customers who are paying A LOT of money to dine at...

We ate at Otto Brisbane as a pre-Christmas family treat. The location is on the river by the Goodwill bridge. Initially I wondered if we'd made the right choice because, although we were warmly welcomed, the table was wobbly, and half the table got their drinks before the other half had even ordered theirs. The restaurant was full and pretty noisy. However the lovely Italian waitress soon put everything right. The focaccia bread and Sicilian olive oil were first class. Then to start we ordered the goat's cheese assaggio, with the fried zucchini flowers. These arrived immediately, and what absolutely fabulous fresh flavours. For mains, we ordered the perfectly cooked market fish and the melt-in-the-mouth pork (with a side of green beans and a side of rosemary roast potatoes to share). The others had pasta, ranging from the cacio e pepe from the small vegetarian menu, the Moreton Bay bug agnolotti, and the cappellacci. The pasta eaters at first wondered if they would end the meal hungry because the portions were not excessive, but the punchy flavours really won them over. For dessert we had a tiramisu and a peach, again just the right size to enjoy. We ordered and savoured 2 cocktails from Otto's cocktail menu. The beer drinker at our table enjoyed his Sea Legs Pale Ale, brewed across the river at Kangaroo Point here in Brissie. We are not experienced wine drinkers, so the very detailed wine list was lost on us. However I would recommend speaking to the sommelier, who guided me perfectly in choosing a glass of Italian red in the shape of Burlotto Freisa to accompany my pork dish. I can't say I would be able to eat here regularly, but I feel like we did get value for our money. We had a really great evening, the service was excellent and the...