Mammamia — Restaurant in The Hague

Date of Visit: 8th July 2023

I recently dined at this restaurant to celebrate my husband's birthday, hoping to recreate the enjoyable experience I had with a friend on a previous visit. However, my family and I were met with a series of disappointments that ultimately overshadowed the quality of the food.

Upon entering the restaurant, I sought to inform the staff of our arrival. Unfortunately, two individuals walked past me without acknowledging my presence. After some effort, I managed to get someone's attention but was directed to another person who seemed disinterested in providing assistance. He simply looked at the computer, shouted something in Italian to a colleague, and left me standing there without a word.

Despite having made a reservation five days in advance, we were informed that a table would be available only after a considerable wait. This lack of organisation and disregard for our reservation was disheartening.

Our dining experience further deteriorated when our starters arrived an hour after our arrival. Additionally, when our plates were cleared, we were instructed to retrieve our cutlery from the dirty plates and reuse it. This expectation is below the standard one would expect from a professional establishment.

Moreover, when I requested fresh napkins for our main course, as the ones we used for the starters had been taken away, it felt as if I was asking for an unreasonable favor. Basic amenities such as clean napkins should be readily available without hesitation.

To compound the issue, we were asked for drink orders only once throughout the entire evening, leaving us feeling neglected and unattended.

While it is important to note that the food itself was of good quality, the overall dining experience was marred by the consistently poor service. Regrettably, such an essential aspect of a restaurant visit was neglected, as it greatly impacted our enjoyment of the evening.

We will not...

Horrible experiences. The waiters lack human empathy, kindness and politeness. We booked a table for 8pm, it’s 8:15 and nobody came to check on us while we were waiting at the door. 8:20 I ask one of them and says “yeah I know they are prepping tables”. 5 min later still no news, we ask another waiter who was extremely rude. He told us “yes you have a reservation but everyone had an 8pm reservation. It’s Saturday in The Hague so of course it is busy!!! We can’t kick people out but YOU are welcome to kick people out if you want, but we can’t.” That’s one I told him he was impolite and he replied “we are busy so if you want to wait we can offer Prosecco. But I don’t have the time to argue I have clients waiting”. So our time of 30 minutes is not valuable for you? You should not work directly with people when you lack training and people management skills. The previous time we went the same happened, no table for us despite a reservation. But it freed 10 min later, which is acceptable. But today’s behavior is clearly uncalled for. It is very sad since the food is very good. You are far better ordering online and eating home than actually eating there and having a bad moment. If you read other bad reviews they always say “fake review”, meaning they never want to recognize...

The food is good but we were really disappointed to see that two special deserts cost us 31eur. The cheesecake was fairly small and it tasted good but charging 15.5eur for it seems quite disproportional.

The price of the 'special desert' was not indicated in the menu and was considerably above all the other deserts in the menu (7.5eur-9eur). We decided to choose the special desert after the recommendation from the waiter, but he didn't told us how much these would cost, and it was not really possible to know that it would be considerably expensiver than all the other options in the menu.

After pointing this out to another waitress she just shrugged her shoulders to the situation and apologized but nothing was done to repair the situation. We pointed out that the least they could do is to indicate the price of the special desert in the menu, to avoid situations like this in the future. All in all, we really became with the impression that this was not something done out of good faith since their action was a merely...