Cafe Toscano — Restaurant in Forster

Instagrammable - not edible!

Instagram factor: 5/5 Food: 2/5 Service: 0/5 Price: -5/5

We were drawn to the café because of the beautiful, welcoming decoration with pretty flowers and a fountain outside of the café. Once we entered, we waited to be seated for almost 15 minutes, just looking around at the staff expecting them to walk over to us. At this time, the café was not even busy. The staff were busy talking amongst themselves, or just being slow and not observant. Finally, a lady seated us at a table (which was still dirty with plates). We then waited for another 10 minutes before someone came over to clean the table and offer us a menu.

The menu had some good looking items on it. Having gone there for breakfast, my partner decided to order a breakfast burger which came with bacon. We asked to replace the bacon with mushroom to match our dietary requirements. We were first told it would cost us between $5-6 extra to do that. We obliged. The waitress then decided to check with the chef if that was okay - it was not. The chef refused to replace the bacon with mushroom even at an additional cost. Super accommodating. Because of their lack of flexibility in the menu, I had to choose the eggs benedict and toast. Even though I cannot eat toast, I had to get it instead of replacing it with a hash brown like I wanted because the chef was unwilling. The food arrived after another delay of 20 minutes. My toast was swimming in a pool of olive oil, my eggs were cold, but the salmon was good. My Nutella milkshake was ice and milk, without any Nutella.

We then had a staff member who without even an “Excuse me”, leaned straight across my face without warning to take the cutlery to place on another table, he didn’t even bother to take our empty plates for us. After that, we had had enough, and decided to leave.

I visited Café Toscano on a public holiday. So naturally there was a public holiday surcharge, which is understandable. However, it is usually 10-15%, and this café was charging us a 20% surcharge. Although that is ridiculously high, it is still acceptable IF informed before being seated. The rude, argumentative staff made no attempt to inform us of this until we had to pay the bill. So we ended up paying $76 for a coffee, 2 egg benedicts and a Nutella milkshake!

This experience really ruined the day for us. If you’re reading this, I urge you not to get lured in by the fantastic décor. The staff is incompetent, the food is overpriced. It’s not worth the pictures...

Poor service, average coffee, limited options for those with dietary requirements.

Dined here for breakfast recently with my husband who was keen to try (I'd already been here only once before and was very hesitant on returning).

After waiting to be seated the waiter called us over and said follow me to which he then went inside and served drinks and meals to other patrons where we were left waiting.

We eventually sat down and about 10 minutes later menus were dumped on our table with the waitress just leaving - most restaurants as part of hospitality in a good restaurant the waitress would usually start by asking if we'd like water or a coffee and if we had any questions about the menu. After another 10 minutes a waiter had returned and I had asked him what items on the menu were gluten free and safe for coeliac disease as not one item mentioned GF/VEGAN/VEGETATIAN etc. He said pretty much all the toast is gluten free to which I asked did they have a separate toaster and said yes immediately then realised and said oh wait no..

My husband decided on the Brekkie Burger and I decided on the berry smoothie. About 25 minutes past and our drinks came out. Coffee was good but the "Berry smoothie" that is $9.90 was essentially cottees strawberry topping with milk and ice and maybe 2 frozen berries if that.

About 40 minutes had past and the brekkie burger never came out and when we went to pay the waitress was very apologetic and asked if we'd like it and had said she thought it had already come out to us and was very sorry. (Pretty sure i saw the burger being given to the large group dining near us after they had received all of their food). Other diners who arrived after us had received their meals in a reasonable time frame but unfortunately we were left waiting about an hour for a burger that never came out. Even with our empty glasses and water in that time not one waitress/waiter attended our table to even ask if we'd like another drink.

Poor service, it would be nice to dine at a restaurant that knows how to cater for dietary requirements such as coeliac disease, but also notice your other restaurants such as The Sicilian your menus are poorly labelled for dietary options, where dietary options should be available everywhere. Come on Forster keep up with the times and "trends" if you must. This is 2023. Everywhere else can give a good hospitality service it...

Walked in to a very nicely presented restaurant. However we were soon disappointed with the knowledge of one of our assigned waiter. Upon entering, we had a quick look at the specials board and when we asked our waiter for details about one of the dishes, he had to go somewhere to find out, then simply told us the basics, including grilled fish fillet with some other things. We asked him what they were and after stumbling over his words, we asked if he could find out, so off he went. He came back telling us the same, but it was served with vegetables. But he still provided less info than what we read upon entering and reading the specials board. We ended up ordering it. Two of our other diners ordered the pasta with spicy ragu. What came out (after a long wait) was fish fillets that were a little overcooked but still ok and the ragu which was so hot, one of our diners simply could not eat it. In hindsight, to be fair we should have queried if the "spicy" meant Chilli-very-hot, or maybe the "spicy" meant spices such as cardamom, cumin, cinnamon etc. We were not impressed with our assigned waiter knowing very little about the menu and having to go back and find out basic info. However another gentleman (maybe the restaurant manager?) was ever so apologetic and sincere and pleasant, came over to talk with us about the spiciness and although our guest refused to have a different sauce or other assistance with her meal, she was shortly afterwards, presented with a bowl of an non-spicy sauce. That gesture impressed me so much and I thank you Cafe Toscano, for that effort. Unfortunately, our guest has a super sensitive stomach recovering from some issues and didn't realise the ragu would be spicy-hot in flavour. We still had a nice evening, subsequent service was extremely pleasant and obliging. Maybe our first assigned waiter was a last minute stand-in, however if so, he should have told us this fact and taken the time when waitering, to obtain more info from the restaurant guests. I would definitely give this restaurant another try (mostly because the second person (manager?) was so nice to us), and perhaps morning/lunch timing...