La Porchetta Restaurant Dunedin — Restaurant in South Island

I had an absolutely atrocious experience at La Porchetta Dunedin.

I booked the function room months in advance for a very important lunch occasion with many attending.

When we arrived, they had no idea we were coming and tried to sit us at a different table. After asking multiple times to please use the function room I had booked, they begrudgingly agreed. The manager was extremely rude and gave no apology. After spending a long time slowly setting up the room while everyone waited patiently we finally moved into the room. After this point, we waited over an hour to be served at all, and when we finally were seen, they were taking drink orders. I asked on behalf of us all if we could please do food orders as we were ready. She said no. That she could only take drink orders and come back later for food orders. She skipped half of the room and only asked the first half of the room for drink orders before leaving. So I wasn’t able to order a drink. Eventually around 1.5 hours after arrival they took food orders. They didn’t ask everyone and some of us had to rush out of the room to catch them afterwards to take our order.

The food took such an extremely long time to come, that some of my guests had to leave before they even got their meal as they had places to be and had already been at lunch for over 2 hours with no food!

Just speaking for myself with the food, when it eventually came, my salad (roast pumpkin and feta) was basically a few pieces of spinach and even less of the other things, absolutely SWIMMING in balsamic vinegar. I had to leave half of it as it was too sickly. I later found out that my son was never given his meal. He was too shy to speak up so just didn’t eat.

The restaurant was very empty so the slow pace was not due to busyness. When guests asked about when the food was coming, the manager said it was my fault for wanting to use the function room which they had to set up which took extra time.

When they started serving the food, many dishes and drinks came which no one had ordered, to which we told them no one had ordered them and they took them away.

At the end of the meal, I ended up in an argument with the manager at the counter, who told me there were still meals and drinks left on the table to pay for. Everyone had paid for their meals & drinks and left by this point. Myself and a friend explained to her that these were the meals and drinks which they had tried to serve to our table but no one had ordered and they had taken away. She wouldn’t allow us to leave and said if they are not paid for it will come out of her own personal money?! Which is not fair? After a while, the one other worker came over and mumbled something to the manager to which the manager told us, okay, we can void this one and this one and this one because that’s on our end. (Again with no apology). I ended up paying the remainder after that because I was sick of the conflict and just wanted to leave. There was nothing left I could do because she was the manager. The manager spoke to me in a very rude attacking way the entire experience and made any simple request (ie. would we please be able to get another chair?) seem like a huge burden and hassle.

I have always enjoyed La Porchetta in the past which is why I booked it, but apparently they have changed management which is a shame. In the past they have had great service, even handing out colouring for the kids etc, but this time everyone at my lunch was shocked and I will never go back. I hope that La Porchetta can look into this and strive to be more friendly and accommodating....

The food was great, but some problems occurred which dampened our dining experience Sunday evening, the first time we visited the restaurant was a 12/10 experience with the mid day staff during the week was as welcoming and polite, leaving us with the impression that we should come back again as soon as possible. The food was amazing prepared by the kitchen staff and made the food to our specifications.

We had decided to come back and bring an associate of ours as we had such a great experience previously and we wanted to share the great experience we had with our associate, but we where met with some complications that left a sour taste on our tongue. We felt that the Sunday evening staff were unorganised as we had politely asked twice to have new cups on our tables as the cups had dried food stuck on the clear drinking glasses and the second time we had asked for new cups we where met with the same unclean cups which left us to think that the staff wasn’t doing quality checks on the dining ware before serving it to the customers. The pasta we highly recommend to get and also the pizzas but alcoholic beverages is subpar as they where not made to the standard that even a normal person can make.

We had ordered a basic double shot of alcohol mixed with soda but when it came to our table, we felt that it wasn’t made correctly due to the fact that the alcohol content in the tumbler glass was to low leaving us to think that it was diluted or we where not served a double shot as we requested. We where met with a possible diluted coke with ice and half a shot of Jamison whiskey as it was made by the current duty manager Sydney that Sunday evening. When asked if the drink we had ordered was a double shot, our waitress was very defensive when all we wanted was to confirm what we had ordered was correct and if it was made to the standard that we had asked him from the beginning. We proceeded to enjoy our meal, and asked our waitress for extra cutlery to eat our meal. We never received our cutlery after the waiter confirmed that would be ok. Overall, the food is good but the hospitality can do with...

We really wanted to like this place. Unfortunatley while the staff working on Friday 14th of July provided us “service” they failed to provide us hospitality. We were greeted rudely, spoken to bluntly and the experience was just awkward overall. The food was okay, although we were told some meals were “not spicy” when they were. Won’t come here again.

(Edit following response from Owner)

Writing another review as the owner who responded to my initial one provided me with no contact details to discuss the matter in order for them to improve their service. To be very clear our issue with the service had nothing to do with the rules surrounding the BYO policy. In fact, if you ask your staff they will tell you there were no issues, we were not intoxicated and followed the rules outlined to us accordingly. To assume we were “upset” about this without speaking to us directly is incredibly concerning. It was the manner in which we were dealt with that was truely disappointing, the whole time we felt miserably unwelcome. For context, there were two tables that were in the restaraunt at the time we were there, including us. When we arrived we had pre-booked and when I went to the lady to say we were here I was completely brickwalled, she walked away and did not even say hello. There were other instances that occurred that night that I would be willing to discuss further but this review has nothing to do with the fact we were bringing in our own alcohol. The fact that I am having to write an additional review rather than speak directly to a manager or owner, as I expected would come from my first review, again points to poor service and lack of care for customer...