Mondo Fresco — Restaurant in Western Australia

Many times over the years I have ordered food from Mondo Fresco and been very pleased with it's quality, creamy sauces, al dente pasta and all rich with flavour and oozing with quality you wouldn't expect from a place like this. From time to time there has been somewhat of a drop in quality... but not like tonight.

Tonight, my partner and I ordered 3 dishes... and all of them were a complete and total letdown.

I ordered beef ravioli with a carbonara sauce. The pasta was undercooked and BLAND. There was virtually no flavour to the filling and it tasted like cheap supermarket ravioli, with the filling having that classic powdery feel of such floor sweepings like what they use in cheapest of the cheap. The sauce was watery and again... bland. There was no taste of any cheese whatsoever in it and I doubt there was any egg either with a consistency like that. The bacon in the sauce was again flavourless and had a dry crumbly consistency much reminiscent of frozen bacon bits or something like that.

My partner ordered penne pasta with a garlic prawn sauce.... I don't think that sauce was even in the same room as a clove of garlic, let alone containing any. The sauce basically tasted like flour, water and milk. The website describes the sauce as "Pan fried prawns with olive oil, crushed garlic white wine in a cream base".... I believe the last two words of that description and that's about it. Those prawns had NEVER seen the likes of a fry pan, and as I've already said there was zero taste of garlic. White Wine....? you must be joking.

The third dish was a simple loaf of garlic bread and yet again... I struggled to find any sign of garlic bread anywhere, the uniformity, blandness and mushiness of the garlic bread makes me strongly suspect it came out of a bag, not the hands of a chef or even a short order cook.

And to top it all off (or not)... they now want $2.50 for a 30ml tub of parmesan cheese.... I did the math, that works out to about $100/kg of parmesan.... I SEVERELY doubt they're using cheese anywhere near that quality.

I've seen mention in other reviews on here that the ownership changed recently, if that is true it's definitely a change for the worse and the new owners need to stop cutting corners before they find their budget cut from under them due to a lack of customers.

Edit: and still no response from the owner. Poor...

EDIT the place is under 3rd new owner now and it’s even worse, products they use are budget, to top it off I was overcharged for my last order by new staff member and no tax invoice was provided to look into this . Will definitely be NOT coming back !! It is cheaper to order via delivery platforms (despite higher price mark up) than go direct. I do not appreciate this , very bad business.

Few things changed for worse under new ownership. Panini comes in a cheap coles ciabatta bread now instead of sourdough-ish rolls. Cheesy garlic bread used to be delicious until they started using weird sweet sauce. It’s disguitsing now. Very bad quality salmon is used in pasta. Very little of it too. Quality of tuna in pasta is worse too. They clearly use cheaper options now compared to original owners. Plus it seems cream sauce recipe changed too. Now it tastes worse than pastacup. Almost like it’s premade. It used to be way better in the past. Used to be a regular here....

Have only ordered through uber eats, never had an issue, food has always been super tasty and really enjoyable (their cheesy garlic bread is my fave). Only taking away one star as I think the staff need to be briefed on the menu more? I called up today as I was ordering something different and as I’m Hindu I don’t eat beef, so wanted to check that the ‘button sausage’ on one of their pizzas didn’t contain beef. Whoever I spoke to on the phone said that there was no way he could tell me what was in the meat... pretty unprofessional to not know what meats/ingredients you’re serving in the dishes where you work. So only constructive criticism would be to better inform your staff or something along those lines! :) But no complaints with taste and quality of food, always been...