Farina Caffè e Cucina — Restaurant in Gauteng

We had a fun quiz night with delicious pizza last Tuesday Jan 17.

However, I got the sense the relationship between the waiting staff and the manager is problematic.

My friend wanted sparkling water and got a bottle of imported Italian sparkling water which she said she didn't want (we're in a climate crisis, why on earth would you fly water in from Italy when we have it here?) When she wanted to swap it for something more locally produced, the waitress was very hesitant to do that, even though the bottle hadn't been opened yet. Then later when we asked for the bill she said she needed the manager first – probably to take the Italian water off the bill; apparently the restaurant doesn't trust its waiting stuff enough to let them to that themselves. The problem was that the manager was "busy" having an extended chat with one of the female clients and completely ignored our waitress's attempts to get his attention. As a result it took half an hour between us asking for the bill and us actually getting it. Please just empower waiting staff to take things off the bill. If you don't trust your waiting staff, why are they working for you to begin with? In the end you end up inconveniencing your clients because now things like this need to go through the manager, who seems perpetually unavailable, resulting on long waits for your clients. And please explain to the manager on duty that managing a restaurant means actually being aware of what's happening around you and supporting your waiting staff to deliver the best service to your clients, not focusing on a single client for over...

We ordered delivery from Farina just like we normally do almost every week since they have opened( excluding when restaurants were closed during lockdown) and now today when they delivered they asked us if change would be needed as we were paying cash. An exact amount of change was given to the person who delivered but we as a customer(and because it’s the decent thing to do) wanted to give a tip... the amount of change would have been to small or to far too much a tip so the man who did the delivery called his boss to explain the problem after the problem gets sorted (fortunately we had enough money to give him a tip that we wanted to give) the owner or manger called us to say that we should have told him that we were going to give a tip and that we should have rather then collected the order instead of asking for delivery after a length call were he continued to argue with us and say it was our fault for not telling him that we were going to pay and how they were preparing for dinner service( like we don’t count for that) he eventually apologised after being told it would have been the correct response... So to the owner I’m sorry we wanted to give a tip to your employee and you will not have to worry about us ordering from you again good luck with running your restaurant and I hope your staff enjoy working for a...

Today is 12 December 2023, a fair amount of time has passed since my initial review. Today however we were nodded at by the young man (waiter), ignored by waitress number 1 until we asked for a menu, she said yes and disappeared without returning. Waitress number two seated a gentleman and proceeded to clear the dishes that were left at the table by previous occupants, glared at us and continued to serve/chat to the new guest. We waited a bit more, just in case, and then we left. Not so much as a why are you leaving. It's a pity this happened because whatever the reason behind this situation we won't be back for a long time, if at all.

We took a tea break/early lunch and decided to check out Farina. The service was great and the food was delicious and reasonably priced. Only thing is if you get there before lunch time you can only order from the breakfast menu. Which might have been a blessing in disguise because my avo on ciabatta toast was perfect with added fried egg, another dish may have been too much. The hot pizza dough sticks are a great addition to your drink while you wait for your meal. Will definitely be back,...