Catalano Family Kitchen Highgate — Restaurant in Highgate

Following lovely reviews i was looking forward to a birthday dinner here.It was the most disappointing experience. It was a celebration birthday dinner with a group of 10. We arrived at 06:30pm and started ordering at 06:45pm. The drinks came late we had to ask. My sister’s entree and main was missed.We waited till 8:00pm to start receiving food. We could see uber eats meals going out and most people that came after us received all their meals and even left before we even started our meals. When we asked where one of the entree was we got told it was missed and when mains were coming the same person’ main meal was missed again.And they missed the same person’s drink. After waiting 2hrs and the rest of the table finishing dinner the solution was to put her meal in a takeaway container. The same person who didn’t get their entree and main they ordered a cider that didn’t come and noone came back to let us know they didn’t have any ciders available. Its sad 1 persons enter order was missed from drinks, entree and main. To make matters worse my nephews pasta had string( looked like it came off a dishwashing brush). The bread we got was not fresh, it’s either it was frozen or it was at least 2days old or something. One of the pasta meals that was meant to have mussels didn’t have mussels. Another dish came with meatballs only without the pasta.There's too many mistakes to even comprehend how this all happened to one table. The St Patricks Daquari was literally ice water with green coloring it didn’t taste nice very watered down. I reckon its best to not host groups of 10 if the facility can’t accommodate large numbers. It really was an unpleasant experience especially for a birthday dinner. Definitely not returning, maybe it was just a bad day in the kitchen.Checking on customers and asking if anything has been missed should be a standard practice not waiting to be asked by customers and still not coming back with feedback is just poor...

Food was OK - nothing special but it filled the spot. Seasonal vegetable was cooked well.

Service was atrocious. We ordered two entree's, two mains and separately asked for a side of potato mash, and seasonable vegs. The waitress hearing this said to us "do you want mashed potatoes and veg on both meals" and we answered yes but asked why she was asking. She told us that it normally comes with chips and salad, but they can swap out that for the mashed potatos and veg. On leaving - we were charged for the full price of 4 sides - i.e. 2 sides of mash and 2 sides of veg. We had not ordered that, so we queried it. After a discussion the manager asked if we wanted a refund and we said yes. She then walked off and came back and introduced a second manager to us who told us that the waitress claimed she'd told us there would be an additional charge. So we had to explain again to the second manager. They told us that they were only willing to refund for 2 out of the 4 overcharged items. At that point we let them know they have a problem with training their staff and left without any refund at all. In short, we paid an additional $24 for chips and salad to be replaced with potato and veg on two plates.

Whilst the food was OK, we cannot recommend this place, nor will we return to it.

To the restaurant: Please take the items that you did not give us but charged us for anyway and give them to homeless people in your area. Enriching a company falsely in our opinion is very...

Definitely recommend for a good value night out! My mum and step dad were visiting from the south west today and we needed a booking for dinner. Mum had booked online and then also rang and left a message asking to confirm her online booking. She did this at 8am and within 20mins Kirsty (the owner) had rung her back to confirm, seeing as she knew they were coming such a long way. We got to the restaurant this evening and were greeted by friendly staff. There was a real family atmosphere (helped by the table of kids and their parents who had clearly been out trick or treating!) We had a bottle of wine and really yummy cheesy garlic bread. (Huge portion!) Our main meals were not only delicious, very generously portioned but also really reasonably priced. The family table next to us had the biggest spaghetti and meatballs I’ve ever seen as a kids portion! Kristy came up a few times throughout our visit to greet us, check in and also just have a good chat about her new business. She’s a genuine and friendly hostess and you can’t help but warm to her. She clearly is very proud of what they’ve created as a family and is keen to make their mark in the Beaufort Street restaurant strip. When we left she not only asked all our names (seeing as we said we’d definitely be back) but also offered us chocolates and individually wrapped gingerbread cookies as a Halloween treat! What a warm and lovely place to have dinner! Thanks for having us…..we...