The Secret Italian — Restaurant in Scarborough

Friday 5th June: After heading to this shop to get a meal for 5 Adult makes, it was totally disappointing what we had to endure to even get our food served. A 50 minute wait from order to leaving & then the order was wrong when I got to unwrap it. After 5 unsuccessful phone calls to their landline that got a Telstra recorded message, I decided to send a Messenger message, which went as follows;

“Do you guys actually have a phone number that rings?

I was in earlier & place 4 seperate orders! Told there was a 15 minute wait. 50 minutes later I get my food! Lots of orders walk out the door prior with what should have been place in the service line for me! Nice staff, totally ridiculous wait time due to untrained staff who are not thinking more than 1 or 2 orders ahead. Back at the house the battered fish is totally soggy due to it being on the service line waiting for 5 minutes for chips! It was horrid! 1 price of snapper seemed to be crumbed, not battered so it was probably the wrong order. Ordered & Paid for 4 x Potato Scallop (Cake) $5:00 & only received 2 scallops! The worst processed bits of rubbish ever! Totally under cooked, white, no colour, no crispness & not worth the effort to chew & spit out. It takes no time to make homemade....just a thought!

Over all, this was a very expensive “Test Run” & our local (*) House does this type of order every week. $98 spent & most in the bin.

I will call in tomorrow & expect some sort of professional response.” ————-

To my surprise, I received the following response the same night;

“Good Evening (*), From all the team at Chasing Dory we would like to apologies for the terrible service we provided you tonight. We do remember your order very well. Could you please provide us your contact details as we will be in contact with you tomorrow before we open. We hope you can understand that with the current events of restrictions being lifted we did not expect such a rush of people coming through. This is no excuse but we do hope you can understand. We hope for the future we can make this up to you and have this all resolved by tomorrow. We do appreciate you contacting us and providing a full statement of your experience as we can use this as constructive criticism. Once again we're sincerely sorry for the mistake tonight. Kindest Regards, Tom” ————-

Yes, I responded with my phone contact & sad to say, after 2 more messages from me this week to follow up with Tom at the shop, there has been absolutely no call back!

All “smoke & mirrors” in the hope that I will forget about the incident no doubt! We, sorry I have a very long memory & happy to tell anyone who will listen what a badly run business this is!

On a side note, I did actually own a Take Away / Fish & Chip shop that was a 7 day a week 8:30am to 9:30pm, serving far more people on a Friday night than was in this one. So, when I say this is badly run, I do know what I’m talking about!

My advice, don’t go here at anytime that might be busy as you will wait & wait & wait...

Not sure if this place has changed management over the last 12 months because they used to be amazing. But the last two times have been completely disappointing.

My husband ordered a chicken parmigiana and was given chicken nuggets in substitution with no advice that it was unavailable or option to change his order at time of ordering. it was only because he opened his order there that it was finally acknowledged that he was given something different so staff were not proactive in admitting this discrepancy upon collection of order but inside discovered by him instead. He also was charged the price for parmigiana but felt he didn’t get the same value in nuggets.

Additionally the Fish we also ordered didn’t taste fresh.

The last time we ordered here, the chicken parmigiana was very small and the portion of chips were very small.

Previously and on many occasions we had ordered fish and chips for one and had far too many chips for two people. This time we were advised by staff to order three serves of chips to have enough but found they were barely enough for two.

I’m sad that things seemed to have changed here as it used to be my fav place to get fish in chips but now it’s likely we will never order here again simply because the customer service, value and quality all seem to...

We live literally down the road from this quaint little treasure so decided to give it a try on Tuesday night. On arrival at the restaurant we asked for a table for two. On looking around a few of the tables were reserved but the two young ladies quickly divided a table set for 4 into two tables of two and we soon sat down and got comfy. Looking at the menu we both felt absolutely spoilt by choice….what to have…mmmmm!! I looked over at the table next to me, Calamari, now that looks incredible. With our minds made up, we soon placed our orders and sat and enjoyed our chatting all the while immersed in the diverse ambience around us. My daughter spent a few weeks travelling Italy 🇮🇹 last year and on her return was yet to find a place that came as close as yours with the Margarita 🍕 Pizza. My calamari with a side of chips and aioli sauce was absolutely delicious. Busting at the seams and not able to eat another morsel the lovely waitress put my leftovers in a takeaway container but not before she and my daughter were having a lovely chat about Italy. It was so lovely to see that glint in my daughters eye again, talking about a place that she without a doubt fell so in love with and can not wait to return to. Thank you, what a lovely experience. We will be...