Cielo Restaurant — Restaurant in Gauteng

Our company was meant to have their year end function in December 2019. Due to continuous rains on a daily basis, we ended up having our company function on the 31st January 2020. Our function was booked from 12h00 - 18h00 with lunch needing to be served from 12h30. Our events manager Matthew totally stuffed up our entire function. He told the kitchen our lunch needed to be served at 17h00. Our staff worked a half day and was starving by the time they got to the event as there was no lunch ready to be served. Our welcome drinks (sangria) was not ready on arrival as promised. This was supposed to be ready at 12h00 and it eventually arrived at 13h30. There were no non-alcoholic welcome drink options catered for. We specifically as for 'NO HARD LIQUOR' to be served to staff but this was at the bar. We had to ask them to take this away but they still served our staff alcohol inside the bar area of Cielo restaurant. We had a token system for drinks and this was ignored. Our lunch was served in drips and drabs thereafter because our food was not ready and the kitchen was running mad at this time. We eventually got served lunch at 14h45...at least 2 stations was open for service whilst the rest was still on their way. We were charged R480 for 8 food stations. This was a joke! the fish station was just a potjie pot of mild fish curry for 130 guests. The pasta station only catered for 1 pasta, ice cream station only served vanilla ice-cream with chocolate sauce. This was served at 17h00 by the way after I had to ask about 7 times. Our business owners, MD and directors from Cape Town flew in especially for this event. I was so embarrassed because they didn't even get to eat and enjoy the festivities because as the food eventually got out then had to get back to the airport to catch a flight back to Cape Town. We provided the venue with a list of the beers, ciders and wines we would like to have at the bar. Our business owner drinks Stella Artois. After making 3 trips to the venue and dozens of emails later, none of our requests was adhered to. In fact our emails was ignored. We had to make visits to the venue just to ensure that our requests was taken into consideration. This should have been the warning signs already and perhaps we should have bailed then as this was a clear indiction of the pathetic service to follow. But 2 of the 3 times we met with the business owner Elvis himself who assured us that our function was in good hands so we took a chance...but never again! The toilet facilities was terrible. The toilet doors locks was broken and couldn't lock, there was no toilet paper in the toilets and it wasn't cleaned. I asked Nosipho, Matt and the Operations manager to clean the toilets on 3 separate occasions and not of them bothered to listen to us. We had to constantly follow up on everything from the dirty floors, & tables, welcome drinks, drinks at the bar, toilets facilities and cleanliness, food being served, bringing out the rest of the food stations, bring out the ice cream station, do not serve our staff hard liquor at the inside bar and even waiting for the bill. Its such a pity, because the venue is beautiful but the quality of service, food and cleanliness of the facilities is pathetic. It's not worth spending money on such a venue. It did not feel like a party at all for me as I constantly had to chase up on everyone to get things done. I sent the owner Elvis an email after our function highlighting all of our concerns addressed above and he didn't even bother to reply to my email. This venue and our experience does not even deserve a 1 star rating but for the purposes of needing to post this review I had to oblige to a 1...

WORST IN THE EASTRAND!! I was there with my friend yesterday. Our day was ruined!! 😡 1 It took the waiters 1H30mins to serve us I asked the other waitress to come and serve me, she said she can’t because she’s knocking off. 45 mins later she was still wearing uniform and serving other people. when we asked about the food, two of them didn’t know some of the food on the menu..?? When we wanted to other cocktails, they said they’re unavailable because the dishes are dirty?? I asked the waiter why their server is so bad, he said they’re short staffed, please make it make sense how youre short staffed in this high unemployment state? I asked for pizza(the other waiter said it’s out of stock?? The other one said y’all don’t have it as in you guys don’t sell it?) The mixed grill came with no side plates, we were eating off the tray! We took bites of every type of meat that was on the tray and we couldn’t eat them at all, they were HORRIBLE and not eatable at all. The other meat was well done the other was medium rare. Everything tasted bad except the fries. I’m still angry!! When we complained the other lady wanted to compensate us by remaking the food. Lol she asked them to recook the same ones we were eating. What a joke!! I asked for the manager or a supervisor they said all the bosses are off?? Take us serious please?? I called the number yall put on Google numerous times and no one picked!! The lady said i must call the other number?? Which other number?? How am I supposed to know which cos its not online?? I left without paying, cos we didn’t eat the food, i left my number with them to call me and address the problem if there is!! A lot of people left after waiting for long cos no one was serving them! The other lady was there with her friends to celebrate her birthday, they also left without being served, She was so hurt cos she trusted you guys and wanted to share her special day with y’all. Y’all are so DISAPPOINTING!!

This is not even half of what I experienced! Theres more, i was so disappointed yesterday!! I HAVE PICTURES AND VIDEOS TO SUPPORT...

I only gave 1 star because I could not choose 0/5. My friends and I will never ever go to Cielo again. Our experience was horrible to say the least. The service is terribly slow and pathetic. The waitress looks like she was half asleep. Took forever to bring our drinks and take our order. We had to call her everytime we wanted something because she never checked in on us. We had to order our 2nd and 3rd drinks 30 mins before we actually wanted it just be they are so slow. The main meals were very disappointing. It was dry and bland. There was a huge problem with the flies. As if all the about wasn't bad enough, at about 15h00 there was a hired DJ that started playing his music and turned it into a "nightclub". Forget that light background music that makes a restaurant warm and delightful. The music was so loud we could barely hear ourselves speak. We requested that the music be turned down a bit so we could atleast converse at our table without having to scream at each other. This was done for short time, until the music was blasting again. Back into night club mode... Your manager is as useless as you can get them. When we requested the music be turned down again he just looks at us like we were the problem. No apologies whatsoever. We requested this twice until we had enough and requested our bill.

Needless to say we all almost lost our voices trying to talk louder than the music and returned home strained voices.

Sad because Cielo has the ability to be a top restaurant based on its "possible" ambience.

My experience years ago was nice, but never will I recommend...