Amici Wine Bar & Deli — Restaurant in District of Canberra Central

Edit (2025): Went for bottomless pasta again, and I am severely DISAPPOINTED. The website listed lemon and ricotta bucatini for the Tuesday I booked for (I booked 1 week in advance), and what we were served was instead the cabonara... One of my company cannot eat pork.

The chef was kind enough to make a serving without it, but my company and I were misled to think we were getting what we paid and booked for. The flavours of the pasta was, to put kindly: okay. Personally, thought the cabonara was lacking a beautiful, creamy flavour.

I understand that, as per email confirmation, the menu is subject to change without notice but at least notify my party and I upon arrival. I even checked the website in the morning as re-confirmation of the supposed lemon and ricotta bucatini, and it was there! I think reconfirming, upon our arrival/seating if we're having the bottomless pasta of x, would prevent dissatisfaction of future customers, or even as an email/text form before arrival.

We were looking forward to the lemon and ricotta bucatini... 😔 Absolutely guttered.

Overall, really disappointed from my recent visit this time around. Food was subpar, even the pizza - for how much it is. There's also inconsistency with the complimentary bread that they serve. This time we got 2 servings, for a party of 3. Too much bread. My second visit, as a party of 4 we received 1 serve. Now it's too few bread.

On a positive note, the staff however were definitely more attentive to me and my party, approachable and friendly.

After my third visit, I probably would not go back.

Went for the bottomless pasta Tuesday dinner with a friend and the pasta itself was really delicious! The serving of bread was really great as an addition too. Atmosphere of the place was really cosy and just fitted the place, it felt really nice to be in. The service from the staff seemed to be a bit over the place as we were asked the same question by 2 different staff (no consistency), and it was not as attentive as I thought it would be (not sure if it's because my friend and I were in a party of 2, and there were other tables with parties from 3 to 7 people - so they had more attention than us). But otherwise, they...

Amici - Lousy customer service, shoddy and harassing booking service, cowardly manager.

I am addressing this to the manager of Amici on Saturday the 4 May 2024.

My wife and I booked an anniversary luncheon at this restaurant and as we had dined here before we were expecting a nice luncheon on Saturday 4 May at midday. The e-booking on their site was made on the 7 April and we received a further 3 emails on the demanding full payment on the 8 April, 23 April and again on the 28 April. As this was still over a week before we attended, we considered it to be very pushy especially asking for full payment up front and pre-ordering from the menu including drinks.

Full payment was made on the 29 April and on the 4 May we arrived at 11.45am and noticed there were no vacant tables both inside and out that had a “reserved” sign on them. We spoke to the young girl at the counter and showed her our booking and we were told there were no tables available as they were booked out. I asked to see the manager but when she went into the kitchen and spoke to him, I saw him hide behind a refrigerator and peek around the side. The young girl came back out and said there were still no tables available as it was all booked out, but she could arrange for a couple of stools in the front window.

I again asked for the manager as he was still hiding in the kitchen was peeking at us from around the fridge and kept sending a very junior girl out to deal with a couple of very upset customers. My complaints are as follows :- Your booking system is lousy and demands payment up front Your booking system is still lousy as you DO NOT honour bookings Your manager on the day was a coward and aside from (not) managing a flawed booking system, could not even be man enough to deal with a problem that your system caused. You failed to manage your walk-ins. You sent a young girl out to your job because you couldn’t.

As a business owner if I, any of my staff or my systems made a mistake, I dealt with it and tried to get the best customer outcome. You sir failed, your staff, your business and your customers. The only glimmer was the money we paid weeks before was refunded the next...

We've had a couple of interesting deserts here (takeaway) so we wanted to give the dining experience a try. I got very excited when I saw the word "raclette" on the menu, but I shouldn't have. We shared two dishes, the marinated eggplant and the Raclette Jamon and Crisps. The marinated eggplant was okay, however I wish I had taken photos because the raclette was not good and definitely not what we expected. I've had raclette in Switzerland and it's nothing like this. I mistakenly interpreted "crisps" as restaurant made potato slices, I don't know what I was thinking, it was literally a plate of Crinkle Cut packet chips and jamon (which, as an aside, the meat was nice) and the waiter scrapes off melted cheese from the top of a large block of cheese (and I mean large) onto it all. The whole thing looked unappealing as opposed to it being evenly distributed onto the other ingredients - it sort of just made a big lump in the middle, I suppose it's a skill that needs to be mastered, but worst of all was the feeling of paying $42 for a bowl of chips with a big lump of cheese on top. We had one alcoholic and one limonata as well and got very little change out of $100 - I despise the feeling of being ripped off when eating out and my partner was livid. For some reason, when I saw the word "raclette" I thought we were going to get the whole Swiss boiled potato and grilled cheese (plus jamon) experience or something like that. Silly me. I don't like it Amici, it's a bit misleading and gimmicky. My advice is to do it authentic or drop it...