Cusina — Restaurant in Melbourne

We gave Cusina a go twice and will never return again because of the lack of service we experienced. We are not diners with super high expectations, so read on....

The first time we visited, the waiter who took our order forgot to put all mains through to the kitchen, so after our entrees, nothing else arrived. After I mentioned this, staff rushed to make good. They got one of the mains wrong, but you can forgive this once. Impression: Food really good - but service absent-minded.

Second time we tried this place, staff took our order only after I had to walk to the bar to let them know they seated us 15 minutes prior. Forty minutes after ordering, still no drinks or entrees had arrived. We politely let the waitstaff know and suddenly drinks arrived - but the wrong drinks. We lost faith at this point and advised the waiter that we'd had enough and stood up and walked out.

What's going wrong here? There is no Maitre D' or manager in charge. The waitstaff are Italian backpackers who although really sweet, haven't been properly trained on how to run a restaurant. The result is chaos. No simple processes are in place like, "bring the customers their drinks ASAP after order placed", so it's nothing better than a takeout with tables.

This is a real shame, because the venue, location and food are wonderful, but the service completely lets it down. You shouldn't have to leave a venue angry because no food or drinks have arrived one hour...

A few months ago I had a delicious medium rare steak, tasty vegetables, wine, coffee and a sorbet in an orange - all great. Free car parking is plentiful in Richardson St. Armstrong St and Erskine St. The pizza part is at the front on Richardson St while the more formal dining area and dining court yard is at the rear. This can be accessed from Erskine St too. I have lived in Middle Park for 33 years and often eat out in trendy Middle Park shopping strip. It is also 100m from the Middle Park light rail stop (No 96 tram).

I went back to Villaggio's tonight (28 Apr 13) and has a nice white wine, crumbed lamb cutlets with a warm potato salad with capers, onion ring and a nice green paste garnish followed by Affogato for dessert which consisted of scoop of ice cream, a shot of coffee and a liquor shot which you can taken separately or mix with the ice cream. I put the coffee into the ice cream but drank the liquor after that.The staff were so nice that they got a $11 tip for this $49 meal -...

Very disappointing :(.

We were so excited to check out this restaurant after moving into the area and hearing such amazing things. Things started off amazing: when we first arrived, the staff were super nice and incredibly warm.

We were sat right beside the road despite it only being only about 1/3 full. The staff frequently forgot about us since we were so far away and hidden behind a post.

I had a special ravioli and, I will admit it was absolutely delicious.

Unfortunately, my partner ordered the bolognese penne and instead he was brougbut some spaghetti that may as well have been from a can. For $30, he got spaghetti noodles with hardly any meat or sauce. He kept trying to wash it down with water. My partner is not one to cause a fuss and probably wouldn't have mentioned how terrible it was if he had been asked, but he wasn't. No one checked on the food until we had finished eating and even then it was a forceful 'all good?' stated in passing while...