Florentina's Trattoria Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Sunshine Coast Regional

I’ll start off by saying that I’ve never felt the need to write a bad review for anywhere and I have no desire to go after small businesses, but I cannot get past the disappointment I felt from the experience of our group when we dined in last night.

For context, it was my partners birthday and I had organised for her family and friends to attend a dinner. I choose this restaurant as we live walking distance from it and we wanting to try some of our local restaurants. I was tossing up where to book and decided on this as my partner’s favorite drink is an Amaretto Sour and I knew that an Italian restaurant would have the ingredients on hand to make them.

To start off, after the 8 of us walking down (we were also the largest group in the restaurant from 7pm onwards) and checking in for our booking, the young girl at the front had no knowledge of our booking as it was not written down in their book. I showed her my online confirmation and so she went to organise a seat for us. We all then sat down and went over the menu’s. The girl came back and took our drink orders and entree’s and. Some of our party ordered beers, soft drinks and mixer drinks while 3 of us ordered Amaretto Sours. All the drinks, except for the cocktails hit the table with the entrees which we were sharing. As we were finishing off the entrees, we noted that the cocktails had not arrived despite it being over half an hour. A member of our party went up to the bar to order another drink and was forced to stand and wait while the staff chatted to and served the clients at the bar. He was barely looked at when served and jokingly said he probably could’ve walked away without paying and they wouldn’t have noticed. He mentioned when we enquired about our cocktails that they were serving the bar staff straight away while our cocktails seemed to have been forgotten.

We decided to wait and about an hour after we ordered drinks, the girl returned with our Amaretto Sours. They were less than half full with ice melted and to top it all off there was no sign of egg-whites which is the key element of a sour. By this time I was quite frustrated and decided to go up to the bar with my drink. I asked the woman in the bar if we had received the right drink initially and she said yes, I asked why no egg whites. So which she seemed confused and looked down at the receipt book that she seemed to be using to make drinks before saying “oh okay, i’ll remake them.” I collected the other drinks from our table and suggested that she dry shake the alcohol and the egg whites before shaking again with ice. Our main meals came out as I watched other cocktails being delivered to other tables. I asked the girl to follow up on our drinks and if it was not possible for them to be made could we please order something else to which she came back to say that they were being “finalized” and would be there shortly. When they were finally delievered, they apologized and said they were training a new member off staff which surprised me as one would then assume that at least 1 person in the bar of 3 would have known how to make an Amaretto sour, since it was on the menu.

The drinks themselves had far too much Amaretto liquor in them and it didn’t appear that they had exchanged the ice from when I took them back 15 minutes before so they were well watered down. Personally, I could not drink mine and preferred just table water despite having water to have a few drinks to celebrate with my partner.

Food was below average and by this time I felt almost insulted and very frustrated and none of the staff members seemed to have the insight to come over and at least apologize or explain the situation.

On top of this, my partners parent’s generously offered to pay for everything and I was shocked that only 1 Amaretto Sour was taken off our substantial bill. I honestly just wanted to go home. I felt embarrassed that I had bought everyone there and so disappointed as I had hoped for a lovely, special dinner...

On the 27th of January we booked a table for dinner for 6 adults and 4 kids. We were seated in the corner inside where the air-conditioner was not working at all. It was a horrible humid day outside and it was even hotter inside the restaurant!! Firstly we ordered drinks, the kids cokes came out hot, the beer with no head on it and we were informed one of the kids couldn't have an iced-chocolate because you had no barista on shift even though an we got a espresso Martini.

This is when we decided to leave your restaurant and order take-out from your restaurant instead. When we got our food, the pizzas and arancini balls were cold, the pasta was bland. One couple received a pile of olives when the menu stated peppers. Another couple in our group got off seafood in their pasta and found a human hair on their pizza.

This is unacceptable and to top it off your wait staff had to deal with the garbage coming out of your kitchen as we were informed that there were no managers or owners available to talk to on the night.

As tourists to Mudjimba we do not recommend this restaurant. The Worst Italian food we've ever experienced.

(Edit- I will add a few points since we were called liars. Your waitress is the one who told us there was no Barista on shift!. We called your restaurant 7 times and were hung up on!!, We asked to speak to a manager or an owner but were told their were none on shift that night. You're staff might be hard working but as customers our expectation is we are served fresh food in a comfortable dining environment. Two of the couples did return your "food" & did receive full refunds on the night. The first photo is olives not peppers as stated on the menu!, Second photo is hair on our food which we didn't put...

The food was fantastic, and came out in great time. Absolutely loved it. The staff were very friendly and attentive. No issues there.

The drinks, a sprite, a LLB took 20 minutes to come; and two mocktails, another 17 minutes on top of that. We’d almost finished our meals by the time the mocktails even arrived. The barman was very apologetic and nice enough. However, we then discovered the tropical breeze mocktail was served in a dirty glass (we couldn’t see this prior as we were in a darkened corner), and only noticed after my daughter had a sip of it, to be left with black marks all over her face from the rim of the glass. I then wiped what was left on the rim of the glass and discovered just how dirty it was. Showed two seperate staff members, and paid the bill - yep, still charged for the said mocktail. Despite this little mishap; the place is most definitely worth every one of the 5 stars. Edit/update - thanks Pamela for the response, it’s appreciated. We are coming back for dinner tonight, though we don’t need a refund for the drinks, we drank most of them anyway - but just feel it was probably what should have been a gesture of goodwill the other night. We are looking forward to more yummy food tonight and the friendly service your staff offer. We returned, and whilst absolutely not required or expected, we were pleasantly surprised to have received our entire meal on the house as a gesture of good will. Pamela took the time to come and introduce herself, and further explain the happenings of the other night. We highly recommend giving this place a go, the staff, the owner, the food, the atmosphere, is all absolutely wonderful, as is the way they deal with and handle any issues...