Nigronis — Restaurant in Nelson Bay

We had a pre mother's Day dinner here on a Saturday night: 3 adults and 2 kids. It looked like a popular choice as all the tables were booked on the street and there were just a few free tables inside. We ordered 2 pizzas (ham & pineapple, supreme), a Greek salad and a bowl of chilli mussels to eat and we requested them to bring together. We felt like it took for an eternity by the time we got - the salad, which we were going to eat with the pizzas but after a few minutes we realised that no more food came to our direction. As we were very hungry by this time, we started to eat from the salad hoping that the rest of the dinner will pop up soon too. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case and our plates were empty again when the two pizzas arrived and even one of them was gone by the time the chilli mussels turned up. Unfortunately, we didn't feel that the wait was worth for. The Greek salad was soggy, the tomatoes were too soft, too much oil and not enough vinegar and lack of olives (quantity was closed to zero). The pizzas were how some people believe how pizzas should look like but definitely not how Italians think about it. The crust was soft and the base was thick, both pizzas were very far from that simplicity how real pizzas look and taste like. The chilli mussels was a real disappointment as it wasn't chilli at all. Zero. Like they mixed the spices and used sweet Hungarian paprika instead of chilli.

Bringing the salad first and the mussels last indicates a chaos in the kitchen, a chef who has to improve his organising skills.

This restaurant might be good locally but compared to other Italian restaurant it's not special at all. It's not the place we would...

Where do I begin???? We made our reservation for 7:30pm once we arrived we were told that our orders won’t be ready for an hour...given it was the long weekend we agreed that was ok. We ordered two pizzas and 4 souvlaki meals...one hour later another waitress arrives at our table telling us that there are no pizza bases left and walked away... I called over our original waitress asking to confirm if that is true with our order and she said no. I then called over the other waitress who again confirmed there were no pizza bases left and we needed to change our order...’an hour later’ we changed the order with NO apology from anyone and continued to be ignored for the next half hour. One and a half hours later we asked two seperate waitresses what was happening with our order only to be ignored as they continued clearing other tables and serving other patrons whom had arrived after us. I then called over a man who was working there explaining our ordeal of being ignored... he apologised and our food was served finally after two hours....oh it gets better.... when we got our bill my son noticed that they had charged us for the two pizzas we didn’t get. So we sent it back to sort it out. I have been to Nelson Bay many times for family holidays but this is the LAST time I’ll be going here. I do not recommend this place to anyone for the pure fact that you will wait over an hour for your order and be ignored by the waitresses. How can you run a wood fire pizza place and run out of dough???? I wish I had read the other...

We’ve been here a few times and came again last night for dinner. They make great pizzas, the pasta servings are very generous and we always love the garlic prawn hot pot. Whilst the staff are always friendly, service has never been a strong feature. Last night was comically bad.

It started with a 5 minute wait at the door for someone to serve us. We were shown to our table which had place settings for 5 but for some reason only 2 water glasses and a couple of the place settings had no forks. I ended up getting up and getting the missing items myself. Orders were taken promptly but the entrees came out all staggered: 2 came and then 10 minutes later another 2 and then 5 minutes after that the last (not sure why the last took so long as it was fresh prawns - zero cooking required). Same with the mains but this time the guest who’d received the last entree got the first main so the timing between courses was very short. My main was brought to me when my entree hadn’t been cleared and a couple of us had our cutlery taken away when the entree was cleared and not replaced so we nothing to eat the mains with.

If more attention was paid to basics like making sure the table is set properly, bringing entrees then mains at the same time, clearing the table completely between courses and ensuring everyone’s cutlery is refreshed, this place would...