Mamma Rosa Pizzeria Restaurant — Restaurant in Ōrākei

I recently visited Mamma Rosa for the second time, hoping for an enjoyable dining experience. However, I left feeling utterly disappointed and perplexed by the inconsistencies I encountered. Allow me to share my disappointment with you.

On my first visit, I was happy with the quality of the takeaway pizzas. Hence, I decided to return with high expectations to dine in. However, upon entering the restaurant, I was immediately taken aback when I noticed a significant price difference between dining in and taking away. Curiosity got the better of me, and I inquired about the reason behind this disparity.

Surprisingly, the waitress informed me that the portion sizes for dine-in and takeaways were the same. She stated that this price difference was quite common in New Zealand, which left me somewhat skeptical. I have frequented numerous restaurants both locally and internationally, and this practice seemed unusual. Typically, when a takeaway menu is priced lower, it is either due to smaller portions or different ingredients or preparation methods. Conversely, takeaways often incur additional costs to cover packaging expenses. This apparent lack of consistency left me feeling puzzled and somewhat misled.

Given the circumstances, my dining companion and I opted for the takeaway menu. It simply did not make sense to pay an extra $6 to $8 for the same pasta dish. Regrettably, our decision only added to our disappointment. The pasta we ordered was remarkably lackluster and unimpressive. It lacked the flavors that we had experienced before with their pizzas. It was almost as if we could have easily replicated the dish at home with minimal effort.

Overall, my recent visit was far from...

The pizza's a little bit too much like dominos to be priced at $30 a pizza. It was an alright pizza, don't get me wrong, If I had bought it at dominos I would have been stoked, but then it would have only cost $5 - $10. The mozzarella seemed like standard bag grated mozzarella, spread all over the pizza, rather than that classic spattering of authentic brine mozzarella you'd usually expect for $30. The marinara and pizza dough fell into that same trap, feeling more like chain pizza restaurant quality. Nothing wrong with that, other than the price.

The menu was quite confusing in that it has the "prosciutto pizza" which after trying to order we were told it's actually just ham. Then we tried to order the "Pancetta Pizza" and we were told again, it's actually just ham. So essentially both menu items use exactly the same ingredients as each other, and neither are what they advertise to be. Then we ordered the "gluten free gnocchi" which we were told isn't gluten free.

All in all everything tasted a little bit too much like their considerably cheaper counterparts and it felt a little wrong to be parting with so much money to have a ham and cheese pizza run through a chain style conveyor...

My wife and I had a dinner at a Friday evening, 2 years ago. We ordered 3 mains and dessert. The meal started around 7.50pm and from 8.10pm, the hostess kept urging us to leave by frequently (every 2-3 minutes) approaching us and asking e.g. what else we need, with a impatient and unfriendly tune. We just don’t want to rush during dinner and preferred to have some small talks with low volume. At the same time, the restaurant was about 60% full and some customers who finished the food much earlier than us were still talking excitedly and loudly, but they were not approached. I had never been treated in this way in New Zealand and I am not exactly sure why. Maybe we were the only Asian couple at the restaurant and speaking English with accent. I have never returned to this local restaurant.

19.07.2022, Response to the restaurant owner’s query. I did not use to do Google reviews for restaurants and thus I simply stopped coming to this local restaurant. But recently I was suggested to share my experience on Google, because it is not the right way to treat customers in NZ, i.e. we don’t...