Very Italian Pizza Leiden — Restaurant in Leiden

I've visited this restaurant three times, but I can't say I've enjoyed it every time. In fact, my last experience at this restaurant was so bad I probably won't go back there myself and with all the great restaurant options in Leiden, I'll not recommend this restaurant to anyone.

The first time I was there the food was actually very decent. The pizza I ordered was baked well and the toppings were very nice and fresh. Sure, it wasn't the best pizza I'd ever had, but the experience made me excited about my next visit there. The only real downside to this visit was finding a small piece of glass in my drink after taking a sip. However, the staff apologized profusely and I probably just had a bit of bad luck, so I didn't accept the compensation they offered and said it was okay.

So, after having had a great experience the first time, I was pretty confident I was going to enjoy it the second time I went there. Unfortunately, reality failed to meet up to those expectations. Unlike the first time, the service wasn't quite up to standards as we seemed to be in some sort of collective blind spot. First, it took them ages to bring our menus and take our drink orders and then I had to get up and ask a waiter to take our food orders. After finally taking our orders, the pizzas we received were overdone and I don't particularly like burned food. I guess our pizzas were in a blind spot of the oven as well. Still, I gave them a bit of leeway since the first time we'd been there, the food had been great.

However, last Tuesday, when I went there for the third time the food was horrible. This time, I decided to go for a pasta dish and ordered the PASTICCIO V.I.P. dish, which (according to the menu) is a combination of lasagna and cannelloni. What I received was way worse than any lasagna I've ever eaten and that includes crappy prepackaged microwave lasagnas.

First of all, in the lasagna part of the dish, the sauce was separated from the lasagna noodles. This meant that you had a literal stack of dry lasagna noodles with no sauce in between them (just think of layers upon layers of noodles) swimming in mushy sauce. I highly suspect it was microwaved too, as the temperature was very inconsistent and the texture of the noodles was a bit like you would expect from exposed noodles warmed in a microwave. It didn't really have taste as well. The lasagna part was dumped on top of the cannelloni part, which was lukewarm at best and had a plastic-like texture. I truly regret not sending the dish back. My girlfriend's pasta wasn't much better and also had a plastic-like texture to it, especially in those bits of the noodles that weren't covered in sauce when she received the dish. (Which makes me thing that this dish was also microwaved, drying out the bits that weren't covered by sauce.)

Personally, I won't visit the place again, but if you absolutely have to, order a pizza. The pasta dishes...

I paid €16.00 for a glass of water and some soapy pasta. The management here is a perfect example of why horeca is on fire right now.

I was very excited by the menu, seeing as it offered a vegan cream. I recently turned lactose intolerant and didn't even know vegan creams existed, so I hapilly ordered some very creamy pasta.

My friends ordered some bruschetta which was just alright. Not enough salt or pepper, but there was nothing blatantly wrong with it; as opposed to my main course.

One of my friends had the same order, which actually had a rather nice flavor to it. Mine was weirdly watery, and had grainy bits on the bottom. The after taste was soapy. I asked my friends and they agreed that there was a difference - that what I had been served was off. There were hard chunks in it that were not supposed to be in there.

The waiter was nice (and cute) but sadly powerless to his impatient and ultimately useless manager who did little more than stand around and instruct him not to serve me properly.

I told the waiter that I did not anticipate having to wait for a new meal to be made and asked for my bill as I had an appointment in 40 minutes. Following that, the manager started gaslighting me over how my dish was in fact perfectly normal, and they forced a payment machine out of the waiter. I am pretty sure they billed HIM the costs of my pasta aswell as myself, but I have no concrete proof of that.

Score tally: Oscar, the Polish waiter : -1 Me, the customer: -1 The manager in tiger print charging both of us for the dish: +2

4 stars are for you Oscar - the restaurant gets 0. It was a busy night so I understand hasty dishwashing, but could you kindly not charge me...

Even though we have visited VIP many times, the last one was disappointing.

When we arrived, even though there were plenty of available and unreserved tables, for some reason they put us next to the bar where there were lots of glasses stacked to be used.

As expected, the person behind the bar mistakenly pushed the glasses, and a couple of them fell onto our table and broke into small pieces. Glass all over the place, in our drinks, on our clothes, and one of the member of my group cut her finger with a piece of glass.

We were obviously distressed and we had to change tables even if we hadn't finished our dinner yet. But anyway, things like that happen.

However, what was not expected was that the waiter (after she apologised) told us that if we want some coffee, it will be on the house. In other words, there was no compensation, unless we wanted something extra. It was already late, so we didn't want coffee or anything extra.

As I said, it's OK if things like that happen, but when a customer selects a restaurant in order to have a pleasant experience and eventually they have to search for plasters and change tables in the middle of their dinner, it is a common practice of respectful businesses to offer some kind of compensation, as a relief from the unexpected inconvenience caused. It's the gesture that matters.

As I said in the beginning, we visited many times in the past and we were happy with the service. But it will take some time to forget...