Portofino GISBORNE — Restaurant in Gisborne

Here’s a sure fire way to ruin your night out in Gisborne, dine at Portofino.

Our experience started with our booking, which had been made only a few hours prior, and was lost.

We settled in hoping to enjoy some “warm, soul-pleasing, traditional meals” and ordered a round of beers for the table. After all 4 beers were miss-poured (we initially received 4 glasses of peroni) we were told we couldn’t have IPA as they’d run out, and we need to order something else. They were not taken off the bill and we were told at the end of the meal they actually had 4 kegs. I can understand the confusion on a busy night especially when the staff are as inexperienced as the team at Portofino - but this wasn’t a busy night.

Our meals were ordered and eventually arrived to the table, at which point two of our party had to leave quickly due to the restaurant being too overwhelming. When we asked for a takeaway box for their food, it took 8 staff and about 5 minutes to receive a single pizza box.

From there, our experience plummeted to incredible disappointment. Seafood in my sisters Marinara was inedible with the calamari being like rubber, the mussels were old, over cooked and unable to be removed from their shells, so they were left to the side of her plate. While she tried to persevere with the pasta, she was unable to due to the bland sauce. The salmon penne was overcooked and the sauce was so bland it literally tasted like pasta covered with cream. My VEGETARIAN ravioli, was bland however I was hungry so persevered and at the end of my meal, I found a prawn tail buried underneath the last couple of Ravioli. As someone who has seafood intolerances (thankfully not to prawn) this was extremely upsetting.

When the waitress eventually returned for our plates, we mentioned our concerns with her and received an meek apology with no attempt to make any kind of reparations. The least we would expect is an apology from a more senior staff member. A nice touch would have been to take something off the bill.

When we went to pay our bill where we expressed our displeasure, the barman didn’t have anything to say and then brought up our overpriced bill - we then noticed the 4 IPA beer hadn’t been removed. Just after the owner was alerted to this mistake, he aggressively stormed off to show his staff where the kegs were located. (Which had us pondering why said owner was expecting new, young staff to be keeping ontop of these types of jobs whilst he sat in his office with these 4 kegs?) When we were finally able to talk about our meals, we were yelled at and told the rest of his customers are happy so why weren’t we. I was told that I was a liar and had set up the restaurant and planted the prawn shell there. My sister was yelled at for eating her meal when she wasn’t happy with it, she didn’t. We were told to “be nice” consistently when the owner couldn’t even take a single item off the bill for us NOR APOLOGISE!

Both myself and my sister work in hospitality, with myself having run several popular restaurants over the past 10 years, and we are avid foodies so have experienced a lot of restaurants through the world. I have never seen an owner or manager behave in such a poorly manner, and verbally abuse customers the way he did. I feel sorry for the young staff if they are consistently yelled at and treated the way he treated them tonight. (STAFF - if he is like this, get out, you deserve better)

The food at Portofino Gisborne was disgusting and I’m sure Italy would be deeply embarrassed to call that garbage “Italian”. What made it a truly horrific night was poor customer service and an appalling attitude by the owner. I felt that I had stepped into a special episode of...

DO NOT GO HERE IF YOU ARE A LARGE GROUP!!!

We had a reservation for 7pm, a group of 10 people.

We didn’t have our orders taken until 7.30pm and didn’t see a single plate of food until around 9pm. There was no explanation to the extended wait and we watched as up to 5 tables of 4 people came, were served, ate their meals and left before we even received our entrees.

When our meals finally came we had 2 dishes of the carbonara that we refused to pay for as one had pieces of shattered plate in it that was chewed and broken in someone’s mouth and the other had a foreign bone in it - neither dish were offered to be removed from the bill, this is something we had to argue for.

When asked how our meals were and we expressed we were not happy we were given the explanation that our entrees and mains were given to another table and had to all be remade which we were not made aware of during our 2 hour wait.. one of the remade meals was dropped off the warming area and shattered which needed to be remade again, this is where we think the broken piece of plate came from and how it ended up in the bowl of carbonara.

The entrees came out first, after the unexplained wait time one of them had to be remade as they brought out the wrong item.

When we received all of our mains the restaurant was due to close in under 10 minutes and the waitress was having us collect up spare dishes on our table and pass them down to her for clean up.

I ordered the fish of the day, the rice was hard and undercooked.

The carbonara was ordered by multiple people in our group who said it was average, not bad but not amazing and not worth the 2 hour wait.

The chicken and mushroom fettuccine had undercooked pasta.

The chicken and broccoli penne was average, comment was that it could’ve been made in a microwave.

The lasagne was good, but again not worth a 2 hour wait.

The lamb rack was ok, but wouldn’t order again.

The risotto and pepperoni pizza were the only highly enjoyed meals of the group.

The food was average and not worth the 2 hour wait time!!! Worst dining experience any of us have ever experienced...

I was out to dinner with friends this evening for an end of year Xmas celebration. From the moment we sat down it was recognised that there potentially was a number of front of house staff on that were new to the job or had not been provided with the adequate training which was not only unsatisfactory for the patrons dining but i believe extremely uncomfortable for the staff trying to do the best with what they were armed with with regards to the lack of training and then dealing with unhappy cliental when there services were not met. I am in recruitment so i understand the difficulties of staffing however never in my life have I ever encountered a situation like I did tonight. We were sitting waiting for our meal when we heard William who owns the restaurant yell from the kitchen to other end of the bar where a young girl was standing, he screamed at her to come to the kitchen and continued his tirade whilst a number of patrons could hear his yelling which continued for some minutes and made diners and staff incredibly upset and on edge. The young girl was reduced to tears and her colleagues also visibly upset at what had occurred. I believe once William recognised his actions he then had his hand around the young lady’s shoulders and walked her through where diners could see as if to console her. This was absolutely disgusting behaviour and in no way anybody should be treated in such a manner, for many young people this will be there first job out of school, so they need supported, trained, and provided with positive encouragement, not screamed at and belittled in front of their peers and diners. Although the meal was tasty I will never be stepping foot in that restaurant again and I would encourage those who work there to leave and find employment where they will be treated with kindness and respect and provided with the relevant training so they can succeed and be proud of...