Manolas Deli Bar Bistro — Restaurant in Gold Coast City

In summary, a mixed review. Food was excellent, the rest was a bit off. We arrived for lunch, it happened to be a special lunch for us, to celebrate my wife's birthday. We were ushered to our seats by someone who tries to be welcoming and warm but is the opposite. But that is okay as they do nothing wrong specifically...at this stage anyway. My partner orders the eggplant pasta and I who have always wanted to try an "authentic" Italian pizza order the grilled prawn pizza. The pasta my wife declared was excellent. Top notch, not a murmur of complaint. The pizza was sublime with only a complaint that is was barely warm. I thought that maybe that was how it was supposed to be but I think not. It was still amazing. The preparation, the base and crust...wow! We complemented our meals with two glasses of the house wine, a Margaret River Collosal Cave cabernet sauvignon.Tart, sour and not very nice . I thought it had been left open to the air too long but I do not pretend to be a wine expert so I thought simply the wine was rubbish. Oh well. The plot thickened when, despite shooing away numerous flies, yuck, one did land in my partners wine. We asked for it to be replaced. It was replaced although filled to a level markedly less than what had been in it when we asked for it to be replaced. Wow, the wine now was as you would expect, full bodied and lush and everything you would want. Conclusion; the original wine had been poured from a bottle that had been opened and left lying around to oxidise. Out in the real world the wine retails for $23 a bottle but our glasses were $16 a glass. I would expect it to be served at its best. To scrimp on this sends a very poor message I think. The quality was poor and the refilling to less than what was in it is scroogish. I appreciate the fly was not put in our wine by the staff but we were shooing them away and how many restaurants do you have to fight off flies in winter? When asked how we had enjoyed our meals we expressed our happiness at the food but mentioned the difference in the two glasses of wine and said we felt that was a bit poor. The service person said they would investigate but simply returned to the desk and did not do one thing. As far as atmosphere, the space is very open with hard surfaces acoustically speaking. The music that was playing therefore just boomed out bass that sounded like a heartbeat or someone fighting for life underwater, Very unpleasant and really of no value whatsoever. Maybe it was where we were sitting and it sounded okay elsewhere but if it was mood music I wish they had...

UPDATE: So I gave them another chance when a friend wanted to go there. She has a small dog. While they seated us outside with the other doggy patrons, we didn't feel welcome and the staff were quite rude. My first review stands.

I have frequented many times and really enjoyed it but I won’t be going back again.

I text to enquire if they were implementing the illegal vaccine mandates that discriminate against the unvaccinated. They said that on legal advice they were, and I replied as follows:

Thank you for your reply.

Please be advised that by adhering to the illegal health ‘orders’ you will be in actual breach of the following LAWS:

The privacy act Breaching my private medical status The bio security act

I won’t participate in a criminal act by participating in this farce.

I will ensure I never attend at your cafe again.

BTW, you might be interested to know that the government figures in the percentage of the population that is vaxxed has been overstated. You will be excluding over 65% of your market - see below.

It will soon come out that both 2nd dose, and Booster shots, were counted as 1first dose (counted as vaxxed) which inflated the total numbers of injected / vaxxed.

Meaning, 1 person who received all shots (1st, 2nd, and Booster Shot) should have been counted as one (1) person only but they counted it as 3 separate people.

So whatever number they publish you'd have to take out 2/3 from their total to get the accurate number that they've already fudged.

Simply put, the #unvaxxed are the majority. 😉

As for your reply, it should be noted that my position doesn't discriminate against anyone...

My complaint isn’t about the food, service or atmosphere. I love this restaurant and since moving to the Gold Coast last year have bought all my delicatessen produce (and biscuits) from Manolas Bros. I am from Italian heritage and having had delicatessens in my family always look for top quality and Manolas Bros offer that. Just three weeks ago we hosted some Sydney friends at your restaurant - they loved it and so did we.

But today in Cyclone Alfred I attended Harris Farm and bought three heavy bags of provisions. I then went to your delicatessen and again bought more provisions. Because of sandbagging around the centre, I parked across the street. I knew I couldn’t carry all the bags to my car in one go so I asked the middle-aged lady with dark hair pulled back (and who has served my husband and I on many, many occasions) whether I could leave my trolley against the wall either inside or outside only to be rudely told “there is not enough room and we are not a trolley facility.” Basically - get out. I might add there was no one in the restaurant or delicatessen when I enquired. I was in a real quandary as I felt I couldn’t manage the trolley over or through the sandbags (I’m 72 years of age). Fortunately two young American men came by able to hear the last part of the conversation with the server and offered without hesitation to carry my bags to the car. A big thank you to those admirable young men and a big bunch of sour grapes to the unhelpful lady behind the counter at...