Ristorante il Gabbiano — Restaurant in Monterosso al Mare

Our first dine in experience here was okay, however I can not say the same on our second time.

On our last night at Monterosso, we aimed to go back to this resto because we loved the food so much! So despite the long wait that night, we persevered.

When we came to first in the queue, we were finally seated. And about 5 minutes after, the last group on the queue were seated beside our table. We were taken aback when they were instantly given the menu, and their orders taken straight away by this older male waiter. While we were just left seated at our table for a long time, with no one giving us any attention.

As no one is attending to us, specially this older waiter who seem to be ignoring us!, I said this so because instead of coming back to us after taking the order from the table beside us, he went to the other table on the other area/side. So we called for the other waiter (younger male) to ask for the menu which he gave however we did not understand why he can not take our order. We again waited for sometime for a waiter to come to us to take our order, until we catched the eye of one of the female waiter.

We explained to her that we have been waiting for a long while to be asked our order. It was a long while because the next table's order was already being served just a few minutes after our order was finally taken.

My comment on this was that we queued patiently and so happy that we had our chance to be seated, we only expected that all must be treated fairly. Not having the last group in the queue being served first, and us who waited patiently and first to be seated was served last.

The female waiter was very kind to somehow investigate what happened, and she came back to us and told that the said waiter (older male) told her that he did not come to us because we were still looking at the menu. This confused us more because we do not have a menu when he took the order of that group beside our table. This even made us felt in disbelief!

We expressed our displeased to her and she was very kind and almost apologetic. She even offered a gesture of goodwill when I was paying at the cashier (at the end of our meal) by offering us some drink (Limoncello) inside the resto because she want to be discreet for the other group beside us to not know about the gesture. However I have turned down the offer as we were in an rush to catch our shuttle back to our hotel (Sussie Bellavue Hotel which we HIGHLY recommend!)

I want to come back and speak to the female waiter about the older male waiter who was being passively rude. But we were conscious not to miss our shuttle.

That night we were not expecting any apology from this waiter however we expect him to be at least professional with us. He did not even greeted us nor gave any interaction with us at all. He totally avoided and ignored us that whole time.

We understand how hard it is to work in such a busy environment and we appreciate that you all work hard. We can relate to this as we also belong to the working class. We work, save up, and look forward to beautiful holidays and experience.

We were looking forward that night coming back at your restaurant because of your delicious food, charming place but it is quite sad that it was put off by this waiter.

Overall, Italy is beyond beautiful, it is such an amazing place! All the people we have encountered have been all very friendly, helpful and lovely apart from this waiter.

I hope that my review will not be taken wrongly rather something that this staff can learn from. All the other staff/waiter are all welcoming and approachable.

I made this review not to down anyone but we are hoping that this male waiter somehow acknowledge his attitude. I am not sure if he just did not like us for him to totally ignore us, but he sure did made us feel that, and that we felt discriminated by him.

To this male waiter, this I say to you... we may not be wearing fancy clothes nor carrying fancy things but we are decent people. We can order what we want to eat and pay our bill. So please treat...

Delicious mussels (one of my favorite seafood dishes in different cuisines) and pretty good penne with scampi (very fresh, and plenty). I always order the house wine and water. My boyfriends bresaola was delicious, too. So were his gnocchi al ragu. The waiter/owner suggested he'd try the pesto as it is a local speciality, but he wasn't cross when we ordered it with ragu. I don't fancy gnocchi much, but these were delicious. You can really taste that they are home made. The service was very friendly and accommodating as I also noticed with the table beside us. I stumbled speaking French and English because I sadly don't speak any Italien. We were so clearly tourists, but we were welcomed very openly.

By the way, I read a few of those one and two star reviews. Some were really laughable others I plainly can't understand. Firstly, if you want to go to a restaurant at 3 pm go to one that is open, and just realize you are in a Mediterranean country where there are many shops, stores and restaurants on break during certain hours. Especially restaurants have to reset between rushes. Secondly, I don't know if people have different understandings of serving sizes, but (let's generalize for a bit) in southern Europe it is custom to order multiple dishes. If I am stuffed just by the entree I will not order an appetizer or the delicious Dolce. The prizes are reasonable plus you have to consider the ambiente and location. And thirdly, for heaven's sake if you just want a drink, go to the bar exactly two doors down. As for the complains about unfriendly staff: I cannot agree with that, but I am sure everyone can have a bad day. If people would just live and let live when it comes to this realization they'd be easier to get along with. If you have read this far, have a great day and enjoy the food, the wine and the view in this lovely...

Pros: Nice view, decent atmosphere

Cons: Bad service, undersalted food.

Sea bass was grilled nicely, but could use more salt and acid (even after the lemon slice which was served with it. Fries did not have a single crystal of salt on it. How hard is it to just sprinkle some salt on fries? Vegetables were cooked quite nicely, but weren’t anything special beyond that.

Service was bad. The waitress asked if we were ready to order and we said 5 minutes. After 2 minutes she asked again, so we felt inclined to rush our order. After everytime someone said what they wanted to order, the waitress asked if that was the only one of that certain item for the whole table. It made things unnecessarily confusing, and it was kind of intimidating - which ruined the mood a bit. 4 out of 5 of us received our drinks quickly, but I got normal coke when I ordered coke zero, and one if the drinks we had to ask for again to receive. We all received our dishes which looked good, but again they weren’t anything too special (except well cooked/grilled). My fries didn’t arrive before about 5 minutes later, and I was wondering that whole time if I should have asked for them since they were a side dish, and easy to serve early (especially since they didn’t take the time to salt them (and there was no salt shaker on the table either)). At last we finished the meal, and it wasn’t specified if we were to pay at our table or at the counter, so we waited for some time before we were told to pay at the counter.

Additionally, our table was juggled between three different servers, which made the experience less personal in addition to the lack of smiles or jokes from the team.

It was also quite hot inside and the ceiling fan wasn’t even on, which madw things unnecessarily...