Osteria Lucio — Restaurant in Dublin

Part I - this review is in two parts. The second part is in the attached photo due to the length of the review because I wanted to be as accurate as possible.

I am the person subject to the review left by Mark Byrne on 8 May and felt compelled to respond due to the inaccurate response by the restaurant with my own interpretation of what happened and why it was the restaurant's error. The review written by the third party, a person in the group I was with, was not entirely accurate but was written on his own accord and so was his own interpretation. I am best placed to recall the actual events and they are as follows.

I arrived to meet a group of friends who were sitting on the banks of Grand Canal, 5 minutes away from the restaurant, who informed me I had missed their pizza order but to quickly call the restaurant and see if I could add a pizza to the order.

I called the restaurant and whoever answered the phone said it would be no problem to add a pizza, that I should order through deliveroo and give them the order number and that way they can add it to my friends order. The restaurant didn't inform me of the possibility that the deliveroo driver may not take it. No issues at this point though.

Next, the deliveroo driver arrived to Grand Canal and that is the first time I realised something was amiss, the pizza was missing. I called the restaurant to let them know and they told me that the pizza had been sent separately. The issue with this was that the pizza had not been sent with my friend's order, as the restaurant had advised it would be, and so was on the way to my house. Had I wanted the pizza to go to my house, and this is the important part, I would not have had to call the restaurant to ask them to include the pizza with my friends order If I wanted the pizza to go to my house, I simply could have just ordered without the restaurant's help. I thought that part seemed obvious and given the restaurant told me to get my order number for them so they could match the orders, I thought they understood that too.

It was on this call that I first encountered nothing more than blatant rudeness. I tried to explain to the restaurant that I had relied on them adding my pizza to my friend's order as they had suggested, that way it would reach me. I was speaking to a server at this point who was so rude I had to ask to speak to the person I had originally dealt with. Their manner on the phone was one of "well the pizza is sent now so there's nothing we can do about it". Not very encouraging. Both people were unnecessarily rude and it resulted in me saying "so I have to take the hit then do I?" which was met with indifference.

At that point I could see the deliveroo driver over the app trying to deliver the pizza to my house (which was far away) but anyone who uses deliveroo often will know that the riders won't redirect and so naturally I never got the pizza, the order was eventually cancelled by the deliveroo driver. I lost that cash.

The restaurant then suggested I get a refund through deliveroo. I tried to explain that there is no function on the app for that to happen. Again, anyone familiar with deliveroo will know that there are a few ways to get a refund, missing items etc., but no way to apply for the refund in these circumstances. When you try, the app will ask you to confirm if your address is correct and seeing as that wasn't the issue, I couldn't go that route unless I made up an elaborate lie to deliveroo blaming the driver for not finding me...

At this point, I left my friends and drove over to the restaurant to see if their communication issues were limited to the phone. My mindset at this point was that it was an unfortunate miscommunication but the restaurant will probably accept that the pizza needed to go with my friends order to reach me and they would probably quickly do another pizza for me. If that happened, I wouldn't be wasting my time writing this post and I would probably have visited the restaurant again in the future because honest...

We went there for a casual dinner. The manager didn’t even greet us. When asked for still water the brought the bottled one (6euros) without asking if we like tap instead. The lemon garlic shrimps were very soft, which suggests that they were over marinated for quite some time. The staff simply doesn’t care, always in a hurry despite the restaurant not being in full capacity, we had to ask for everything (salt, pepper, olive oil), when they cleaned the table they left our used napkins on our table despite being clearly set aside to be discarded and didn’t bother getting us new ones. Ravioli was over cooked and super soft. The manager didn’t even show up to say hi or ask us about our meal, instead he was chatting with staff. In fact no one checked how is the food, do we need anything, do we want to eat more or do you want to see the desert menu. At certain moments, no one was minding the hall, everyone was either on the counter waiting for the plate, on the POS or chatting with the manager or each other. The portions were extremely small to the price offered. The bread and the side salad were surprisingly good and the tiramisu as well. Still 7 euros for two pieces of bread and a tiny dip is a rip off.

This place used to serve the best pizza in the area but they cancelled that 2 years ago, at least that what the waitress told me condescendingly when I asked about it as if I am supposed to know. Even the service was amazing during its Michelin guide era.

We left a very small tip, so we had to go and take our own coats. Not going there again, save your money and go...

Food was amazing. Service was good too and only issue was as I am gluten free, they brought our two starters which we were sharing with gf bread so my partner ordered flat bread which waiter forgot to order and he had to wait for it to arrive before he could eat his starter so he ate that alone as I couldn’t wait! Lol Mozzarella with the warm peach was a great combo, and the prawn starter also so good! However, the starter prices are very high! I had the chicken as gf option on pasta was dried pasta which didn’t fancy. The gravy with this was yummy! My partner had the monk fish. We shared a tomato salad which was only tomatoes so not what I expected. The polenta fries were great although it was either these (cross contamination) or maybe the Baileys that gave me an awful upset tummy a few hours later?! I am not coeliac, only gluten intolerant so this does happen to me when I eat out from time to time as my tummy is sensitive. We both enjoyed these mains and the fries. Dessert was the Panna cotta was was so tasty!! Meal for two with no drinks except the one Baileys was €140 so not cheap for two and had we been drinking it would’ve been...