Fontanella Wine Bar & Bistro (Vinum) — Restaurant in Mdina

I usually don’t write bad reviews, but this time I feel I must. We visited your restaurant at 3 PM and unfortunately experienced many problems. Waiting time: We had to wait in line for about 30 minutes to get a table. That’s fine if the food and atmosphere are perfect, but I would recommend offering drinks to guests while they wait. Service: After being seated, it took a long time to place our order, and then another 20 minutes just to receive drinks. We ordered main dishes and dessert — but the dessert arrived first, and the hot meal came 10 minutes later. That doesn’t feel right. Other customers: We noticed similar issues at other tables. One couple didn’t even receive menus and had to take them from another table. At the table next to us, guests received their pizza first, and their drinks only after they had already finished eating. Facilities & payment: Guests even had to wait in line to use the toilet and again to pay the bill.

From what I saw, your employees work extremely hard — like bees! I don’t blame them, but I do question why the restaurant accepts so many customers if it cannot provide proper service.

I truly hope the staff are treated better than the customers were on this day. I don’t enjoy leaving negative reviews, but this time I felt it was necessary.

The food was fine, the view also was nice!

Good luck, and I hope things improve...

There are 2 areas to this place - upstairs in the formal restaurant, downstairs as a cafe known for their cakes & sweets. This review is for upstairs as it is called Vinum upstairs & Fontanella Tea Garden downstairs. The atmosphere is fantastic, huge wide sweeping views, romantic at night & glorious in the day. The food & drinks were great, in fact the cocktails have quite a hit & the wine menu is lengthy with great choices. Food is wonderful, we ate some unique pastas & liked it, our starter of fried cheese is a Maltese specialty which we found very salty but it's meant to be. Hey, at least we tried it! The only downfall was the service - very very very long wait for everything, from getting menus, to taking orders, to getting your food. They have 4 waiters but it seems only one is actually taking orders, so if you're ordering a drink better order 2 as it will be at least 30-45mins before they come back. Worse was paying the bill which you don't actually receive until you pay it!! You have to go downstairs to a snappy bad attitude 20 year old cashier who reads off your bill verbally very quickly, tells you how much total & then expects you to pay. She refuses to give you a bill before you pay, even when you ask for one. Strangest payment...

Really wanted to like this place, but the service was abysmal. The bruschetta was delicous; one of the best I've had. The pizzas we had were ok; decent amount of cheese and sauce but the toppings could be better cut and placed. Getting a mouthful of one topping but not the rest defeats the purpose of having a multiple topping pizza. The crust was 3.5/5, toppings and whatnot were delicious, if only spaced better.

Unfortunately, it took us 30 minutes to get service (e.g. actually being acknowledged by someone), with the majority of the staff looking like lost goslings until what we can only surmise was the actual server, showed up. Food took the normal prep time, but the busboys/table minions were totally lost on where our food/drinks went. Later, when asked for our cheque, it took another 30 minutes to get that. Once we did, we were told to go downstairs to pay.

Thankfully, we were musing around and had nowhere real to be (other than maybe another bar). Greeting staff were friendly, serving staff were polite but...