FÁBRICA @ SUNNINGDALE — Restaurant in KwaZulu-Natal

I will preface my review by saying the restaurant knows its clients and knows exactly what they want. For most this restaurant will be amazing and won't be able to fault it. I will say the wait staff and management are fantastically well trained and the atmosphere is incredible. However for me I came in looking for coffee and I must say I was sorely disappointed. My personal poison is a machiatto which is a single shot of espresso with maybe 2 teaspoons of foamed milk on top now I understand this is Durban so I do understand they will opt to put more milk in for the local pallete however what I received was very beautiful and well layered in a lovely glass cup but it was definitely a small latte and not a machiatto. The espresso itself was alright a little on the acidic side but over all not bad it was just difficult to taste over the sheer quantity of milk. I did not bring it up at the time as it would have been difficult to explain exactly what I wanted but for a company that prides itself in coffee it was a disappointing beverage. Due to this experience my wife and I opted not to eat anything and to just pay for the coffee and leave. It seems as though fabrica has over complicated their lives and it makes it difficult to focus on executing things perfectly. There are 3 pages of coffee beverages and the food menu must have over a hundred items. We used to love coming to fabrica when it first opened but it now seems like they're all bells and whistles. They offer both a v60 and chemex brewers under speciality brewer coffee section when these brewers essentially brew coffee in exactly the same manner. Being from the industry we understand how incredible difficult it would be to execute a menu with so many items and sadly it seems that fabrica has gone for quantity over quality. All in all it was beautiful coffee but it was not...

This was my first visit to Fabrica and it was memorable for all the wrong reasons.

The vibe and decor are great but that was as far as the positives go. We were 3 adults and 2 kids. When we sat down and waited about 15 minutes before our waiter even acknowledged us, this is after asking another waiter to find ours. We ordered our drinks which took a long time and then placed our food order. We sat there for almost an hour waiting for our food. We ordered plain scrambled eggs for the kids which any restaurant would quickly prepare yet the kids had to wait for an hour. We had finished our drinks long before the food arrived. The food itself was not too bad, sounded better on the menu then it actually tasted. We had to remind the waiter to provide us with salt and pepper. We also had to remind him to provide us with sauce, which was promptly taken away as another table needed it. No one even asked us during our meal or after if everything was OK and if we needed anything else.

It was a terrible experience, I asked the matron if it's busy and she said it was "organized chaos". Only half that statement is true as it was definitely not organized, the chaos I agree with.

No apologies for the long wait or lack of communication. On top of it they incorrectly charged us for the kids milkshakes.

Hopefully they can turn it around as I can see by other reviews that this is not an...

We had what could only, hands down, be named as one of thee worst dining experiences here. Friend and I went in for breakfast, got there at 11am. 1.5 hours later, we got some* of what we ordered. The waiter we had was in training and it's fine and understandable that he would struggle. However we also asked to see the manager and she never showed up either. Our original order was apparently 'thrown away' by the staff in the kitchen. So our waiter had to retake the entire order. Our drinks took about 20 minutes to get to us even after this (there was no Earl Grey and the waiter wasn't aware about what the milk options were). After being assured our meals would be out in 5 at 12pm, when our food arrived at 12.40pm, the veg meals we ordered had bacon and egg on them. When we informed the waiter, he went back to the kitchen and came back with yet another meal that wasn't ours (bacon, again) AND then asked: 'Is this yours?' The third time, he brought out the right meals for us both, together with a lovely long hair on one of the dishes. To top off this debacle, our bill was also incorrect, having both bacon meals added to it. Needless to say. Nothing was eaten that day at Fabrica. And yes. We did pay for our drinks and the meals we did receive even though we left...