Pellegrini's Italian Chatswood — Restaurant in Sydney

The negligence of Pellegrini’s Chatswood staff resulted in a severe anaphylactic reaction. I spent the rest of the night in the hospital emergency department and I nearly died. The attitude of the staff was appalling and I have never had a worse restaurant experience.

We ordered the Bronte pizza, which is listed on the menu with basil oil as an ingredient. When the pizza was served, I noticed that the basil oil seemed quite chunky, and so I called over a waitress to make sure that this was not a pesto and was in fact just basil oil as listed in the ingredients, as I am severely allergic to tree nuts. When the waitress returned, she explained it was a paste of basil and oil, and I again asked whether it had nuts, which she said it did not.

After having a bite of the pizza, the waitress returned and said that the paste also contained peanuts (which I am not allergic to), however I flagged that there was definitely another nut present as I begun to have a reaction. The waitress was completely disinterested and said she could bring a menu for us to choose a new pizza, however I could not eat anything further with my reaction setting in.

I spoke with the manager, and I was told again it was just a peanut basil oil paste, however I was actively reacting to the tree nut present. The manager said she would go and look at the ingredients again, however she stopped at several tables along the way and did not prioritise this at all. She returned and said that the paste also contained cashews, which I am anaphylactic to.

It is completely unacceptable to have checked multiple times and for this event to have occurred. I performed my due diligence and let the staff know of my allergy, but the staff were complacent and at no point did they seem concerned about my health and safety. It is dangerous to substitute ingredients without notice in the case of a pesto paste for basil oil, and is particularly irresponsible when nuts are such a common allergen.

I can confidently say the food was not to die for, and the carbonara served before the nutty pizza would have been a very disappointing last meal.

I would strongly advise against this restaurant if you have any dietary requirements, and would probably advise against the restaurant generally due to the attitude of the staff. I certainly won’t...

If I could leave a zero star I would. We had pre-booked a table and noticed an empty table as we arrived and assumed it was ours and mentioned this to the host, the host brushed us off and said our table was not ready, after waiting 20 minutes we approached the host again and asked if this was our table as it was still empty but prepared to seat 6 x people, the host only then decided to take us to this table we already knew was reserved for us. We found the service to be quick as we were seated but not sure if the waitress that served us was part of the restaurant as there was no uniform and thought she was just another customer when she first approached us. As the waiter came to serve our food, the pasta bowl slipped from the waiters hands, causing the pasta to fall flat all over our table, smashing wine glasses in the process and oil being splattered on our clothes. The waiter, who was clearly not trained, was overcome by embarrasment, walked away and left us but no choice to start cleaning up the mess as it started dripping over the table onto our clothes and floor. The poor waiter did return with paper napkins to finish cleaning up. But still had to finish our meal on an oily table... The other dishes and wine glasses near the area had shards of glass from the impact. At this point there was no indication the waiter was going to remove the affected dishes and wine glass and we had to request they be removed and replaced.

If this wasnt a bad enough experience, we were running late for a show we had booked at the concourse, we asked for the bill and 5 mins later the bill never came, I approached the reception to pay and there were 4 staff just standing around the register.

Furious at this stage, I was shown the bill and asked to pay, I ignored the tip and refused to reward poor service. At this point I was furious and waiting for a simple apology, clearly this was not happening, they seemed oblivious and clearly not interested at all with the entire situation. Poor service and less than satisfactory with the...

Pellegrini’s Italian is located in Chatswood’s The Mix and it’s a restaurant in a nice open casual space where you can share a meal with friends and family indoors or out.

The menu is traditional Italian with a modern twist, with the likes of woodfired pizza, pasta, risotto and a range of entrees too. They use locally sourced produce and authentic Italian herbs, making it all fresh daily. There is a dessert or ‘dolce’ menu if you like to finish with a sweet or two. We also were really impressed with the drinks, especially their cocktail list.

We began with the homemade meatballs, made in a beautiful slow cooked Napoli sauce that we mopped up the remaining sauce with our garlic bread and homemade butter.

For the pasta, we were impressed with the Paccheri, essentially like thick penne pieces and it was flavoured with garlic, cherry tomatoes, prawns and zucchini. This was a nice light dish and we especially liked the pasta pieces.

They’d forgotten our pizza, so we ended up getting it takeaway, but glad we did, for it was super good. Their authentic woodfired pizza is topped with generous toppings and the zucchini flowers worked super well on this. We were lucky to score a free margherita pizza for our 1 year old as the chef had made a little extra

They offer deals such as “all you can eat pizza” on Mondays, an $18 lunch special on Mon-Wed and happy hour cocktails until 6:30pm. How good is that!

We enjoyed our meal here, and appreciated the hospitality and squeezing us into a table when we hadn’t booked ahead. But, we recommend you do, because it...