Casalinga — Restaurant in Melbourne

Wish I could give this restaurant a ZERO!!

So, where do I start???

Came here to help celebrate Valentine’s Day with my lovely partner and was totally wrong of coming here in the first place.

Inside the interior is very outdated, decor is very old looking and was very cramped with lack of space. We loved the fresh rose placed on the table.

We got served to order our drinks and food.

We ordered lemon lime and bitters with no ice and a mocktail.

Once the order was placed we had to wait 45 minutes for our first meal to arrive at our table.

Once we finished eating our first course I asked the waiter about our drinks. He said he will go and make them and got our drinks 15 minutes later, only to find out that he stuffed up the lemon lime and bitters and added ice to the drink which is not what I asked for in the first place.

The waiter said sorry and apologised and came back with the correct drink.

Then we had to wait for another 1 hour and 15 minutes for our second course to come to the table.

One of the dishes was a pork kofta dish which arrived frozen cold and was a huge disappointment.

At this moment we were starving hungry and was about ready to go home.

Mia came to the table to help us out with our issue and we asked her if it was supposed to be served cold or hot.

She had lots of attitude and said “I don’t know it’s it’s supposed to be served hot or cold” I’ll let you know.

She came back after another 15 minutes and gave us a reheated dish of the pork kofta.

After we ate the second course, it was time to wait for the third course which was dessert.

We should have gone home by now but we did our best to be patient and we had to wait 45 minutes for our dessert.

By the time we left, which was 10:30pm (3 hours after being seated) people were still being served their 2nd course! Bloody pathetic!!

Just a heads up for anyone else wanting to go to there set menu for Valentine’s Day in the future, it was $65 per person.

Then we wanted the bill to pay for our food and drinks.

The blonde lady was very dumb and wasn’t sure if we were sitting at table 13 or table 14! When I heard that, I was laughing inside because all night they were serving the wrong dishes to the wrong tables all night so that made sense to me in a way.

We paid our bill and we definitely won’t be coming back as we have had better...

Was excited to return to Casalinga after our first visit was quite impressive, however tonight left us a little disappointed. We were seated at 6.30 to which we were left to look at the menu for about 25 mins before the staff took our order for food and drinks. They did make a comment about the restaurant being nearly fully booked, however it was far from so when we were seated and hadn’t filled up considerably more in the near half an hour we waited to order. The staff however were very friendly and personable which I appreciate and we weren’t necessarily in a rush to eat so it was okay. Entrée’s came out in about 20 mins; we ordered from the oyster bar and a bruschetta to share; the oysters and bruschetta were beautiful and we were excited for our mains after this. However we would then wait at least 50 mins, possibly even longer until our mains were brought out; by this point we were starving. By this point the restaurant was still not fully booked and other tables in the front dining area had also been waiting a long time for their orders to arrive. The mains were eventually brought out to which they were okay but nothing standout special; my Veal Scallopine was flavourful but was sitting in a lot of oil so I didn’t finish my plate. Our mains weren’t bad by any means, but given how long we had to wait it was a bit of a let down. Ultimately our experience was by no means awful, but was it worth the nearly 2 and a half hours spent there? No. If I were to return especially on a weekend I would take into consideration the wait time and make sure you don’t book if you have somewhere to be by a certain time. I would also maybe suggest the serving staff to advise their customers of any delays or prolonged wait times so as complaints and dissatisfaction can be avoided; I for one appreciate transparency and communication for such matters. Otherwise not an unpleasant experience by any means, thank you for...

With such high rating across all platforms, we were definitely disappointed by the restaurant's service.

Food: 3/5 We ordered a Carbonara and a Chicken Schnitzel. The Carbonara was a tad too creamy; overall as a dish, it was average. Chicken Schnitzel was definitely made in-house and was tender, the sauce was good too. The spinach with red onion jam and pasta that came as side dishes with the schnitzel were very nicely done.

Cleanliness: 2/5 One of our glasses had lip stick stain on it, which is a bit of a let down.

Service: 0/5 We went in on a Saturday (23/11/19) lunch, the restaurant was not excessively busy. When we sat down, we were only given the lunch menu and had to ask to be given the pasta menu. We were seated on a table without napkins and were not given any napkins throughout our entire meal.

The waitress (Caucasian lady with blonde curly hair) was very, very rude. We overheard her conversation with another table and that she is the Manager and has been with the restaurant for 5 months.

As a new customer who has never been to the restaurant before, I assumed I should raise my hand to get her attention and order when we were ready, as I do in any other restaurants. When I did that, she replied, in a harsh and blunt manner, "Can you see I have other customers waiting" (exact words) and then something along the line of I will come around soon. We were completely happy to wait for her to come back and then put down our order, but the passive aggressiveness was completely unnecessary and unprofessional. Needless to say, it has made the rest of the experience very uncomfortable and borderline dreadful. We would never return to this restaurant again.

I usually don't write reviews, but our experience with this restaurant was so terrible I feel like I needed to write this down on...