Little Aosta — Restaurant in South Island

Worst experience I've had at a restaurant in my two years in New Zealand. It started off ok, we ordered two drinks and the arancini to start. For the main, I was debating between the mushroom pizza and purple cauliflower & truffle pizza. The waitress suggested the purple cauliflower one to try something new, so we went with that.

However, after 45 mins waiting and watching the other customers who arrived after us get their food, we knew they'd forgotten our order. When we asked the waitress about it, and she said that because we ordered a starter, the kitchen was waiting to make our pizza - basically putting the blame on us and lying since the other customers ordered starters as well. She promised the order would come out in 8 minutes, which it did. But the pasta was undercooked and the purple cauliflower pizza had white cauliflower with raw kale (which was not on the menu) thrown on top. Apparently the waitress didn't know they were out of purple cauliflower, which is the main ingredient of the pizza.

They recooked the pasta and gave us a complimentary mushroom pizza (that was good), which we appreciated. The manager also offered to book us into Aosta with vip treatment as an apology, but when we called to confirm with Aosta a week before, they had no booking for us in the system.

I would not recommend coming here as they are apparently too understaffed to take care of their customers and make promises they...

It is a shame the beautiful aesthetic and quality food at this establishment is let down by the service and lack of atmosphere once inside the restaurant. Although the website states walk-ins are welcome, we made a reservation online for 8:30pm, noting they also had availability at 8pm but wanted to give ourselves time to drive in from Queenstown. On arriving 10 minutes early, we requested to be seated early. There were ample empty tables, however the waitress behind the bar encouraged us to wait outside until we were retrieved by a staff member. We were standing outside for 15 minutes before another waitress came outside to ask if we needed something. She was shocked and brought us inside to be seated at a table that had been vacant the entire time we’d been standing outside? Clearly nothing about our arrival or request had been communicated. Thankfully, this second waitress was wonderful, attentive and friendly but overall we regretted picking this restaurant to celebrate on our honeymoon as the experience wasn’t as we’d hoped. You want to feel welcome although your patronage is valued. This aside, we ordered the arancini, two pizzas, the carbonara and Chiacchiere, a spritz and Pinot noir. The wine and pizzas were fantastic. Arancini was enjoyable but not particularly flavourful and the dessert was quite nice but a very large serving so you can easily share one between...

Quite possibly one of the most awkward dining experiences.

My husband and I were the only two people on the restaurant on a Friday night. Understandably, it is off season. We ordered some olives, two beers and two pizzas.

The olives were cold and spooned out of a large jar and when I asked the waitress whether they were meant to be wood roasted as per the menu she said they were...you would think if they were they'd be out into a dish and oh, I dunno, wood roasted and maybe warmed up?

The pizzas arrived within five minutes of us eating the olives which we both thought was really odd. Surely if you're the only patrons in the restaurant, why would you not stagger the mains... We felt a bit rushed by this. Pizzas were tasty but lacking that classic punchy tomato flavour you'll find in a margarita.

The manager popped in and awkwardly looked at us. The waitress didn't engage with us and instead dusted bottles of liquor. Just left us feeling weird and awkward. Surely if your restaurant is dead on a Friday night you'd at least try to make some kind of conversation with people (the tourists) sitting there. It makes such a difference. If you rely on tourism to keep your business afloat in the off season then for God's sake TRY! Try to make an effort, have some weeknight deals on and get your customers through the door, engage with your customer's and make it memorable,...