L'oro da Napoli Restaurant — Restaurant in Żebbuġ

Total Disappointment!

Not sure where to start from .....

We were shown our table, which was located in the large terrace with spectacular views of Marsalforn beach. So far, so good, but not for long!

The service left a lot to be desired. The staff do try, but have to say that customer service is not their forte! At one point, our table seemed to be invisible. There were two young ladies serving the entire restaurant, although to be honest, it wasn't very busy during lunchtime. Our waitress could hardly speak English and/or Italian (since this is an Italian restaurant run by Italians). She could barely communicate with us. We asked if the restaurant serves "fresh catch of the day" (fish), but she completely misunderstood us. She thought that we were asking whether the fish on their menu was fresh or frozen! She kept explaining that their restaurant buys fresh fish listed on their menu on a daily basis! We were however asking if they can serve other fish not listed on the menu, which is very typical in most fish restaurants in Malta.

The majority of our food was shockingly poor. Our starters were just ok so to say. I had tuna carpaccio, which was served with slices of oranges (more fruit then fish!). My wife and 2 daughters shared grilled sausages and calamari fritti. Really and truly, nothing could have gone wrong with the sausages, but the calamari were a plate of deep fried disgusting and stodgy mess on a bed of limp salad!

Long time before we were served with main course. It was in fact served almost a full hour later in dribs and drabs! All the other customers were served much in advance before us. I had no other option, but complain, and was told that it will be served within 3 minutes, just to find out that we had to wait for a further 10 minutes!

Main course consisted of individual dishes. The kids had a Beef Tagliata and a Veal Milanese respectively. Big portions indeed! I ordered Oven Baked Turbot fish. To my surprise, this fish is usually shared between 2 people. The menu does not state that this is a sharing plate, and to add insult to injury, the waitress did not point it out even though the 4 of us ordered a separate main course! I had no other option, but ask the waitress to pack half of the fish in a take away bag! The fish was also immersed in a greasy sauce when served. Again, the menu does not mention sauce anywhere! My wife ordered Tuna Steak. This was served 5 minutes after the other 3 main courses were served! The tuna was coated in some sort almond crumbs, overcooked, really dry and tasteless. More then half the portion was left in the plate untouched!

Prices not so cheap though! All this at almost €33/head (2 adults + 2 kids) without wine and dessert!

Needless to state that this was our first and last visit at this awful restaurant. Avoid this restaurant at all costs. The chef cannot cook and the Italian owner does...

Staff were polite, however quite unhelpful. There was little knowledge of the menu from staff and when asked about an item, we were left waiting 10 minutes with no response. We asked another waitress and were left in the same situation. We ordered 2 pina coladas which were mainly ice and coconut cream. They weren’t the most pleasant to drink, however we drank them as we were thirsty and left waiting 40 minutes for a singular caprese salad. We did order 2 different cocktails after which were fine- however, again full of ice. After a 45 minute wait in the practically empty restaurant, we enquired about the caprese salad, which shortly arrived later. I would say there was no more than 2 tomato’s, 1 mozzarella and half a packet of rocket on the plate. This was not worth €10.

We have never been left in the situation to complain about food, so we felt hesitant to complain. As someone who has worked in hospitality for 3 years, I felt it was necessary. After asking to pay for our drinks and leave, we were greeted with the owner who did not once look us in the eye. He showed no remorse and argued with us through the staff, as a translator. We politely complained about the amount of food as the menu stated 2 lots of 100g mozzarella, which we did not receive.

We felt uncomfortable to bring up the drinks due to the owners temper. After a dismissive and angry argument from the owner, he presented us with the mozzarella used, which in fact was from Lidl. The packaging showed around 225g, but with a drained weight of 100g. He did not seem to understand this.

The food was taken off our bill and we left, however I felt like we had wasted our money on our drinks and our time on our last day of the holiday. We came to get drinks and a small bite to eat, not to receive budget supermarket packaged ingredients and an...

Awful experience. We were a table of 6, we called to book a table outside in advance and reservation was confirmed, we arrived and no table was set up outside so we had to wait for them to do this. The waiters could not speak or understand English properly. The antipasto arrived with 4 of the items listed on the menu missing, still the waiters could not understand what the issue was, we had to literally point out to them on the menu each missing ingredient. They brought us used dirty glasses to drink from and didn’t even notice when we gave them back and asked for clean ones. They told us that the vegetables and potatoes had ‘finished’, despite having numerous dishes on the menu containing both items. When the main course arrived they forgot one of the dishes leaving one of us without food. They did not even notice someone’s meal was missing, as nobody came to ask if the food was okay so we had to go and tell them ourselves. Fresh tuna steak which should have been medium rare was cooked well done (inedible). Finally, the missing meal arrived when everyone else had finished eating, and the fish was still raw. The waiters then completely avoided us and did not even come to clear the plates. We had to go downstairs to pay and told them that we won’t be paying for the two dishes which were inedible, the chef came out from the kitchen and started to shout with us in Italian because we did not want to pay for inedible food. No apology, nothing.

Absolute disaster,...