Tom's Italian — Restaurant in North Beach

We hadn’t been to Tom’s Italian before, but had read the good reviews, and drive by almost daily, and can see how busy they can be, so booked in advance. Let’s start with the important and relevant bits first. Order included Meatballs as an entrée, Scotch fillet (Medium rare) and pasta as mains, with a kids cheese and tomato pizza (even the Italians would frown at what we received being a Margherita). Meatballs were bland, steak was overcooked and unfortunately a bad cut and chewy, although the potatoes were nicely cooked, and the sauce was excellent. The pasta was as bland as the meatballs, with the exception of the meat in the pasta that was actually quite good. On to the pizza. My 4 year old would eat pretty much anything, but he used the words yucky, which is rare even for him. At first glance you could see it was overcooked, and edging towards being described as burnt. I tried it out of curiosity, and of the 300 or so pizzas I’ve had in my lifetime, was in the bottom 3. It was tasteless, dry, and whatever cheese was on there must have evaporated in the oven. All that was left was a tomato base. Now, I’m a desert person, and have never walked out of a restaurant that has tiramisu on the menu....this was my first. Unfortunately the restaurant and café industry is suffering from lack of good waiting service, and Tom’s is no exception. Walking in, there were 4 tables already seated, with 7 staff. It was nice that they were attentive of our 4 year old with crayons and paper, but dropping them on the table and walking away, even though we’d been seated for 10 minutes, seemed odd considering we hadn’t ordered any drinks yet. Not a huge problem though waiting another 5 mins. Whilst I’ll be picky here, staff were dressed in random wear from jogging pants to hoodies and runners, which doesn’t evoke any resemblance to anything other than a café, and the décor emulates the same. Customer interaction was zero, and this seems to be a common theme, nearby restaurants have similar poor engagement levels and customer service. When there’s so much food left at the end of the meal you’d expect there would be some level of concern from staff. The waitress seemed loathed to even ask “how was it” and that took a while, and even then the feedback seemed lost. I even prosecuted by saying, I’m happy to give her feedback if it will actually go somewhere and be of use. Which she acknowledged, and said that it would be. Sadly I did see the waitress drop the plates into the kitchen area, and walked straight back out. This was as I was walking to pay, and so I could see she was straight back to the tables. I do like to provide honest feedback, and where there’s positives, provide them. In this case, drinks were good, sadly food was subpar in every plate. When paying there was no opportunity to give the feedback. I could have offered it, and was waiting for the opportunity, but as the waitress didn’t pass it on, and in this case was not asked, so why bother, especially as we’d be...

Very Disappointing Experience

My family and I are regular diners at Tom’s Italian and have always enjoyed the service and food. However, our experience this evening was extremely disappointing.

It was our daughter’s birthday, and we chose to dine at Tom’s Italian to celebrate. Upon arrival, we were seated promptly and placed our orders for drinks, entrées, and mains all at once. After waiting 30 minutes, we noticed that our drinks had still not arrived, while other customers who came after us had already been served. I approached the server to enquire about our drinks, and she seemed confused. After checking, she realised there was an issue but failed to provide any explanation.

Despite asking repeatedly for clarification, we were left in the dark. Eventually, our drinks arrived, followed shortly by the food. Unfortunately, my husband’s pork belly dish was disappointing, as everything on the plate—except the pork belly itself—was burnt. The calamari in the arancini balls was dry and clearly not fresh. While the pizza and pasta were acceptable, the overall experience was far from satisfactory.

By this point, my family and I were extremely frustrated. What made matters worse was the complete lack of care or accountability for the poor service and food quality. As a consolation, we were offered a bowl of burnt chips—no apologies, no explanation, and absolutely no regard for the inconvenience caused.

We had been looking forward to this evening all day and had even brought a birthday cake to celebrate, but by the time we finished, we decided to pack the leftover pizza take the cake back and leave. The bill came to $225, which felt excessive given the subpar service and quality of the meal.

This situation could have been easily rectified with an apology or acknowledgment from the server or manager on duty, but that never happened. Unfortunately, as a result of this experience, we will not be returning to this restaurant.

My advice to the owner is to invest in proper training for your staff to ensure a higher standard of customer service and...

A friend invited me to this restaurant for lunch. I got there before she did. First impressions were great. It was vibrant, the view was beautiful, the senior waitstaff that wecomed me and sat me down were just wonderful.

Everything was going great until we went to order food. I had noticed while I was waiting that they had "carbonara" on the menu - with pancetta and cream!!! Absolute culinary no-no. Like pizza with pineapple. "Oh dear" I said to myself "I guess that's why it's called Tom's and not something more Italian." We were tossing up between the garlic and cheese pizza or the foccacia. Thing was the foccacia was said to be served with the cutely named "agrodolce". Soursweet? I asked, never having seen it presented this way in either Australia or Italy. Then the waiter explained it was your standard olive oil and balsamic. That changed our minds and we went for the foccacia. Then the waiter "joked" we could have both. What did we get? We got the garlic pizza with the oil and balsamic!!! Ridiculous.

Anyway, then it was to the mains. We had both eyed up the scallopini. But I asked for mine without kale and my friend asked for hers without capers. What did we get? Two without kale. So we tried to explaining to the junior waiter - "No, one without kale, one without capers." So they took hers away to try again. You know what they came back with? One without kale again!! By this time, my friend could see I was struggling anyway with the veal as it was as tough as old boots. It also looked like it was just covered in Gravox and looked like dog food. So she changed her mind and asked for something else, pasta with prawns, which was apparently okay.

As someone really well-travelled throughout Italy over many years, there was not much "Italian" about this place. Best intentions. Execution just pathetic. I guess it was just a bad-luck...