Mozzarella Bar — Restaurant in Melbourne

Today, I went to Mozzarella Bar in Seddon to attend a function. Before going, I had read some of the reviews on Google Maps about other people's opinion.

When I first arrived, I noticed it is modern, clean and well layed out.

To start, we were given the drinks menu. We had to wait around ten minutes before the first dish (the entree) arrived which was the antipasto. It was the Mozzerella Bar Antipasto, which wasn't enough to go around.

We then waited for our second entree, which was from the 'Pizza All' Aglio' range of dishes. It was the Garlic, Oregano, Sea Salt. Sadly we noticed that the pizza dishes were sitting on the counter for over five minutes waiting to be served. For this reason the pizza's weren't hot when served. I found the taste of the pizza's to be fine. It had a crunchy taste and the crust was cooked very well. Another downfall to this meal was that there wasn't enough given out to the tables. We had to share a pizza between nine of us. The pizza's weren't even that large to be shared amongst that amount of people!

As the entree came to an end, the order for the kids meals was placed, and it came out promptly. They were served the Pasta Bolognese.

When we finished the entree, we noticed that the two chef's behind the counter were standing around and not cooking. In fact, that looked like they were doing nothing.

We waited over an hour for our mains to arrive. During this time, we were sitting in a crowded room on hard timber chairs. Also, the temperature levels didn't help. The room was hot due to the wood fire pizza oven running in the background. We opened the main door to let air in, and the main manager spoke to us about the door being opened in italian, to which I asked him to speak in english. He said that the air conditioner cannot work with the door opened, in which I explained to him that the air conditioner was to small for this size room, and the pizza oven was running in the background. Not to mention we were packed in the restaurant like sardine can's. He then opened both doors.

During the wait, the waiters went around the restaurant taking more drink orders. When they asked me, I asked for the main meals that were taking an absurd amount of time to come out, and not a drink!

When our main meals arrived, it was the Gnocchi Della Casa and the Creamy Mushroom Pasta. In my opinion the gnocchi itself was very nice, but it had way too much tomato sauce, and the sauce tasted very thick. The gnocchi was very soft and nice to eat, but there wasn't enough of it. On the other hand, the creamy mushroom pasta tasted average.

Next, we had various types of wood ovened pizza's. Again, we were given one pizza to share amongst nine of us. We noticed other tables were given twice as much for that were needed, even though we were all one group/party in the restaurant. The pizza's consisted of the Romana and the Margherita Verace. I found them to be ok. It had the pleasant wood fired taste and an evenly cooked crust.

That was the end of our meals (other than cake and coffee).

My summary:

All the waiters and waitresses seemed somewhat courteous, but you could definitely tell that they were under staffed and felt pressured under the amount of patrons in the restaurant.

I found the main manager/front of house (he had a mohawk hairstyle) to be in control, but rude at times towards the customers.

There definitely wasn't enough space for the amount of people in the restaurant. We were too cramped and as people walked between the tables, my chair was constantly knocked every time.

Time management was extremely poor. This caused for some confusion in the meals served.

I noticed that the uber eats bags were on the counter, but in the four hours I was there, I noticed that not one uber eats order had taken place.

The meal costs are way too overpriced!

Overall, I feel like this restaurant does have the potential to be better, but due to the amount of patrons in the restaurant today, it didn't run as well as I believe...

We had booked for a 7:30 pm table. While waiting there at our table for 25 minutes for our order (drinks and food order) to be taken two more table were sat down and had their order taken within five minutes of sitting down and then were served their drinks and then their food before our order was even taken. We had been sat outside for almost an hour before our food and at least 45 minutes before our drinks arrived. When our drinks finally came the waitress took it to the two other tables sitting outside first (whom are the other two tables who sat down after us and who already had their food and drinks) the waitress then brought the drinks to my table after having already sat our drinks down in front of two other tables of four people in total; I then requested if we can have new drinks as I didn’t appreciate my drinks I had ordered to be taken and placed in front of other customers first. I could then see an argument going on inside with pointing and other vigorous body language towards myself even though I believed it to be a reasonable request given what is going on in the world at the moment. I then had the floor manager come out and say “what’s the problem here” in very hostile tones and I explained the “problem”. When our order was taken it took another 30 minutes for our entree of one bruschetta and calamari entree order to arrive and the food for our entree was cold and the calamari was rubbery and covered in excess flour. Throughout the night the service from the waitresses and floor manager was definitely lacking towards myself and my table and is evident by the fact that each time any member of staff came outside the overlooked my table and went to the other tables to serve them first. This is evidenced by the fact that we sat down first had our order taken third out of all three tables and were still there last after the other guest had eaten and left. For the waiting time it took for the entree to arrived the entree was very poor. We ordered and entree and main course at the same time the main course of Gnocchi porcini and linguine di mare were under cooked the fish was still raw and we didn’t finished any of the food that was given to us from this place of business. All in all it took almost an hour and 30 minutes for us to receive two course we didn’t even eat half of the food given to us; the customer service was non existent towards us as we were overlooked in favour of other customers. As it is a time in the world when businesses need to have a less capacity they were not busy and everything about our experience there is highlighted by the fact that they were not busy. I have other things I can say but will end with this customer service very poor and the food was even worse which in my opinion was a hard thing to achieve but you managed to do it so Congratulations on that! I wouldn’t ever return in a million years and I hope if you read this you won’t go...

I do like coming here & the food is great and comes out fast. I don’t have any issues with that. However - I came here last night and the waiter misunderstood what I wanted for my pasta dish so I got the wrong one. After telling her it wasn’t the one I ordered, I did get the one I wanted. When I left I got charged for 3 pasta dishes (two for me including the wrong one, and my partners) she said she would give me a free apple juice (I was charged for that too) for three dishes, plus two entrees two beers and a apple juice it came to $127 for two people. I rang up to tell them I got overcharged 10min later as I added it all up via there website menu. They said they “couldn’t find my order” I did pay cash. I also told them I made a reservation so the would be able to see where I was sitting. The lady who answered said the owner would call me, didn’t get a call. I also didn’t get my money back for the extra charges. Therefore if your going to charge me for your staff making a mistake at least put the pasta in a take away container for me to take home. Don’t charge your customers for your mistakes. I wouldn’t care if it was$5 but we are talking $27 dollar here for a extra dish. Most of the staff are from overseas. So yeh.. very good professional service here. Check your receipt if you come here cause they don’t care once you pay and they don’t...