Garibaldi Pizzeria — Restaurant in Melbourne

Beware! Inconsiderate Staff and Unreliable Service

My recent experience at Garibaldi was incredibly disappointing and frustrating. As a strict vegetarian, I made it explicitly clear to the staff while ordering that I cannot consume any meat products and chose the Margherita pizza for this reason. Shockingly, despite my clear instructions, I found a piece of bacon on one of the pizza slices.

Upon bringing this serious error to their attention, instead of apologizing and rectifying the mistake, the chefs were incredibly rude and dismissive. They even had the audacity to downplay the issue, claiming it was "just a small piece" and showing zero regard for my dietary restrictions and sentiments.

This level of negligence and disrespect towards customers, especially regarding dietary preferences, is utterly unacceptable. Restaurants have a responsibility to ensure the accuracy of orders and respect the choices of their patrons. Garibaldi not only failed in this regard but also displayed appalling customer service.

I strongly advise fellow vegetarians and anyone with dietary restrictions to exercise caution when dining here. The lack of professionalism and empathy exhibited by the staff leaves much to be desired. As a customer who values respect and integrity, I will not be returning to Garibaldi and will be sharing this experience widely.

My reply to their Reply: To be honest, the employees in their M-City restaurant were not at all apologetic for what happened on that day. They had an audacity to argue and defend their mistake. Also, We are coming from a well to do family. I don't even care about the 50% discount on a Pizza, that was hardly 12$ on a 160$ bill, also, we did not finish the Pizza, 50% of the pizza was left in the dish untouched. All we needed was an attention to this problem from the staff and a apology on the incident in a decent manner. Giving Meat in a food to a pure vegetarian is a crime and I can also Sue the restaurant for this, I didn't because we were getting late on that day and forgot to take pictures of the pizza (the staff has the photos and CCTV footage, therefore, I don't need to prove anything). I would only suggest public to not visit such restaurants where they don't take your dietary...

Have been to this venue on multiple occasions with the family and have never had an issue until last night when I went with the missus. Ordered the $45 rib eye and saw it sitting on the bench waiting for service to the table. The waitress and the boss had a disagreement causing her to leave the restaurant for some fresh air. By the time the food came to the table the side of chips had gone cold. The waitress was kind enough to get a new batch of hot chips and was apologetic but we could hear the boss yelling at the chef. Very unpleasant experience. Upon cutting up the steak it was really salty and dry and we thought the pepper sauce that accompanied it would at least mask the saltiness. But the sauce itself was even saltier. We asked for medium rare but as you can see from the photo it came out well done. As someone who works in hospitality my wife and I were reluctant to cause a fuss but we wanted to bring it to our waitresses attention that it was not what we ordered. When she looked over at the boss who was at the cooking station he said that it was our fault that we had left it to sit for that long before eating. I’m no chef but I doubt letting a steak sit for 10 minutes to rest would turn it into beef jerky. When we confronted the boss again he was adamant that the steak was cooked medium rare and that we had eaten most of it before we put in the complaint. The picture I added was what we left behind. When I told him that medium rare should still be pink and sometimes still bloody he told me that I should be a chef. We just couldn’t believe the lack of customer service and ownership from the head of a restaurant. We were not looking for a refund or a replacement steak. We were just disappointed with how our food came out. The pizza and minestrone soup that we also ordered was satisfactory but if you pay $45 for a steak you expect it to be cooked to your liking. Unfortunately we will no longer dine at this establishment and it is through no fault of the waitress who was appalled by how her...

Worst Italian food I’ve ever had. Rotten salad leaves and a disastrous crew.

Came in and they sat us down at a table that shouldn’t even exist - right underneath the counter, where meals are prepared on the pass and the chefs are frantically cooking right above your heads. Just because you can put a table there doesn’t mean you should!

Our waitress was unable to speak English. I asked multiple times if the bolognese in the lasagne contained just beef, or a combination of beef and pork. She glitched in real life and simply couldn’t give me an answer, even after I repeated myself twice. A different waitress saw this blunder and bumped her out of the way to take our order instead. By then, we’d already ordered arancini for entree, and the lasagne debacle was occurring while we tried to order mains.

The second waitress assured us that whatever we ordered with the first one would still go through, but lo and behold, no arancini for anyone that night because that first waitress did NOT, in fact, put that one through.

So it was straight to mediocre mains. I’ve never had a bad lasagne in my life, and this one managed to change that. Bland, low-quality, reheated garbage. The pizza was only slightly better, but was extraordinarily thin to the point where it was bending and breaking each time you picked a slice up.

The cherry on top of a horrible dining experience was a salad filled with soggy, rotten salad leaves, meaning half of it was inedible. Pretty sure that’s an OH&S violation, and I’m convinced this was what made us sick on the night.

$65 completed wasted (and still waiting on...