Madonna — Restaurant in Helsinki sub-region

This might be a long one but bear with me. I really want this restaurant to be successful so I can enjoy a nice italian dish in my new hometown Helsinki!

My and my partners favourite restaurant is Gloria's in London when I uses to live in London. Madonna has a huge resembles to Gloria's, in a way it is intentional but not in a bad way. From decor, Menu print, actual food selection to cocktails the similarities are there.

We went inside with the expectations of Gloria's but kept them low to avoid any disappointments.

Anyway, let me unfold the review,

Location & Decor; Central and easy with transportation. The restaurants design is very lovely and welcoming but I found it a bit cramped. I liked the island bar in the middle alot. I don't mind sharing tables with others (Mediterranean way of doing things) but if I am given a seperate table, I dont want my elbows in touching distance with other tables. We went on a Saturday evening and welcomed with live Piano and Cello. It was a very nice touch! Toilets were clean and was provided alot of handsanitisers everywhere, COVID-19....

Menu; Openers Classic Italian openers. Nicely presented but abit small portioning for the price. We have ordered Caprese which came in an enormous plate with 4 small pieces of mozarella and thinly sliced tomatoes.

Main We have eaten different Pizza's and found them having abit too much in tomato sauce department. Maybe it can come with less tomato sauce so people can taste the other ingredients more. Overall, quality ingredients and nice dough. Pricing was Helsinki standards nothing revolutionary but a Napolitan would be very dissatisfied. For comparison, a good sourdough italian pizza in London comes around 12€ while in Napoli around 7€.

Dessert Tiramisu tasted just OK nothing special, although my partner loved it. I was expecting more liqour in it, not sure it had any. (Being shared house in the past with a Trevisani who spoiled me with best tasting Tiramisu's. So my standard are high!)

Cocktails First things first, who would pay 7€ for a shot of limoncello! Anyways, I have tried 4 different cocktails and enjoyed all of them. Sitting next to the bar, I was able to spy on the bartenders for some extra cocktail tips. My recommendation would go for Negroni, a must try!

Service; Waiter who served us was mostly well educated on the menu and very welcoming. Maybe abit more education on Pizza department as we were misguided and end up ordering the wrong pizza. But not a problem! After we talked about the issue, it was rectified swiftly by the waiter and kitchen! good on them and extra kudos to our waiter!

And we have been offered with a nice shot of Limoncello from the house, a nice gesture.

Overall, I will give around 7/10.

Recommendations to management; Offer the limoncello shots for everyone for free with the bill. People already are paying 50€ per person, selling a shot of digestive for 7€ is a bit greedy. It would be a nice gesture from the restaurant. For the winter menu, maybe you should lower the prices abit. Check Gloria's pricing, the guy brings you pasta in a cheese reel and charges you less in London! It seems pricing is the consensus with the reviews, listen your customers who bothered to...

I first tried this place in September 2020 and liked the place but was a bit disappointed by the food. That time the main problem was that my pasta was so over cooked it just turned into a ball, which I think is a bit shocking for an “Italian” restaurant.

I gave it another try 3 years later, and was again a bit underwhelmed. The seafood pasta was so salty my mouth almost hurt. Otherwise the taste was good but it seemed like someone accidentally dropped a salt cellar in the pan. When I mentioned this to the waiter as feedback to the kitchen, he argued back saying there is no added salt. The salt only comes from the seafood. I tried to say I had pretty much the exact dish tens of times in Italy and never once was it this salty, but he didn’t seem to really care. I was not even complaining, just wanted to let the kitchen know that I PERSONALLY found it way too salty for my taste. My friend also found her risotto too salty, but we didn’t bother to mention it at that point. Overall, this person seemed to be very stressed or having a bad day, the service was not the best unfortunately.

On the other hand I like the concept and the decor of the place, and some of the staff is very nice and friendly. The cocktails are nice. Some of the food is also very nice, but the quality is...

Atmosphere was really good and enjoyable. Four of my friends including me ordered pizza, mine and one other friend’s pizza was really burnt that it tasted like I was eating charcoal. We called the waiter to inform them in the politest way that it’s really hard to eat this pizza because it tastes really burnt. She then said that’s how it’s supposed to be and I said but 2 of our other friends pizza aren’t burnt. She screamed at me asking “ you want another pizza “. Which came out of nowhere, then we said yes because we cannot eat this. The next pizza they brought us were underbaked. But I didn’t wanna seem unpleasant so I didn’t say anything. I just wanna say please normalise people asking for what they paid for. Customer service like this is the reason why people can’t say anything even when the food they literally paid for isn’t well prepped. Please do better and for the waitress or manager, please learn how to control your emotions in front of customers even if you don’t like what they say. She wa swearing different clothes compared to the other waitresses so I’m guessing...