La Rumbla Ristorante — Restaurant in Sydney

TLDR Slow food delivery. Loud. Bog standard italian fare. Get a jar of leggos and save yourself a trip.

It was either a bad night or this is just not the restaurant for me. I try to be fair. Running a restaurant is not easy. Nor can they be at their best at all times. Bad service can be trumped by good food and vice versa. I will happily give a good rating when there is something that just wows me and the rest is ok or average.

Friday night 8 people. Arrived 720pm. Our waitress was a young lady who was really friendly and helpful. She was the only positive experience for me of our visit. She was also the only real waitress there. The other servers were older (no ageism here) but just weren’t on the ball.

It took 20 minutes for water to arrive at the table, over an hour for garlic bread and bruschetta, and, some of the mains after 1hr 10mins. It then took another 20 minutes for 2 other mains (pizzas) to arrive. Some items ordered (sides) were also not delivered.

Our waitress appeared mortified at the delay on the pizza, was apologetic and did not charge for the pizzas.

Some of the dishes were quite nice other members of our party had. But the bruschetta was oily on poorly toasted bread. It lacked a little seasoning. The pork sausage pizza that took 90 minutes to arrive was oily, the base was therefore soggy, the toppings fell off, it was overpowered by fennel and was also poorly seasoned. That was a chefs special. I have had better pizza from a supermarket freezer. The other pizza for one other guest was ok according to them but still not as good as dominos.

If you like bog standard italian fare, lots of noise so you cant even talk to the person next to you (people and music) and a long wait - go forth and enjoy. If you like efficient service and simple food done well or are a little impatient like me - might be worth a miss.

There seemed to be a higher focus on take-away or delivery pizzas than people sitting in the restaurant waiting for pizza as many seemed to go out the door in that extra 20 minutes we had to wait.

I usually give restaurants a few visits if part of the experience was not great the first time but other things were. In this case I will not be. I will go get a...

Cons: We have been there on a few occasions. The very first time was a shock to see the parmesan cheese that came off somebody's table was put back in the big parmesan cheese with the rest which was behind the bar and we happened to see it.. we were absolutely shocked and sickened by this.(where we were sitting. We also saw him take Parmesan cheese out of that very same container to put on to somebody's table. That's how we knew it wasn't a throwaway container of non-used cheese) We decided never to use parmesan cheese there again.

The last time we were there the staff was so busy talking that it took quite a while to get their attention.

Pros: Take away: We have ordered (take away )pizzas there before which were absolutely delicious

Eat in: Cons: The food we ordered for the price was extremely dry and rubbery. (Lobster half) the pasta did not have much flavor at all and only when we added chili did it come from no taste to delicious? Everybody's taste is different so this is just a personal opinion.

Pros: Another person ordered a steak and he found it absolutely delicious.

Cons: We found that the lasagna and spaghetti bolognese was way too salty on a previous visit But again, to each their own, some people may like a lot of salt in their food. We prefer to add ours (to taste) if it is lacking, rather than have too much.

Pros: We have had many pizzas from this restaurant and literally found everyone the perfect.

Atmosphere: Cons: When we walked in all we heard was a bunch of men swearing about something while sitting on the outdoor seats.. it turns out one of them was the owner so luckily we sat inside and didn't have any children with us otherwise we would have just turned and left. It doesn't really make for a welcoming environment.

Pros: Set up...

I understand that a party of 20 people is not easy for any restaurant to accommodate but I also think waiting an hour and a half for food is unacceptable. We made our booking over a month in advance and were told entrees had to be pre ordered, no problem at all. We were sat at two tables and within 15 minutes we were served entrees. After another 10 minutes we were asked to order mains while we were still eating entrees which to me would indicate they wanted to get started on our mains and serve them in a reasonable time. The waiter left at 7:30 with our orders and the two pizzas ordered were served at 8:15. The next main was not served until 8:45 and the final main was served at 9pm. One table was served by 8:45 while the other table waited as I said until 9pm. We were constantly reminding wait staff that we ordered drinks as they would just not come back with them and were told at one point we were not being served as another table had complained and they had to be served first. The food was inconsistent, some of it was good and some of it was quite bad. It was an unenjoyable experience and I would not recommend this restaurant especially as some of our family drove 3 hours just to experience this. We were extremely embarrassed to say this restaurant operates in the same area we live. To top it all off as we were about to pay a waiter came to the table saying they forgot to charge us for entrees, which they made us pre order, and added another $320 for 4 antipasto and 4 bruschetta pizzas, (that's $40 per entree) to an...