Dolce Vita Poole — Restaurant in England

A lot of people seem to love this place, so I'm not sure what happened the night we went but it was truly awful.

When we got there our reservation hadn't been passed on by the person that took our booking over the phone, so we had to wait in the bar for half an hour. We are pretty chilled and this wasn't a big deal but as the evening progressed it became obvious that the restaurant was overwhelmed and had taken too many bookings and couldn't cater for customers. The menu was not the same as the menu online but was instead a handwritten, photocopied A3 sheet. No pizza, no vegetarian options for my niece who is veggie - just a few set meals like chicken and sea bass and overpriced seafood pasta. The weird thing was that people (their mates presumably) who came in after us were served before us and had pizza, even though we were told it was off the menu!

Starter of garlic bread was burnt. I had the spicy pollo (chicken) main which took an hour and a half to arrive and when it did (after many waitresses coming to our table trying to give us the wrong order) it was just a massive piece of chicken with 3 small potatoes. I had to ask for extra veg. All meals took an age to arrive and were mediocre. Sea bass and pasta dishes also v small.

I felt sorry for staff who were obvs overwhelmed and stressed, but no-one came to talk to us or apologise for long wait. They gave us some money off and a voucher but we still paid £18 per head for poor service and very average, overpriced food. We won't be...

We had booked a table for a party of eight several weeks in advance, anticipating a great evening. However, upon our arrival, we were told that our reservation could not be found. The staff explained that they use a third-party app to handle bookings, but this clearly didn’t work as expected.

We were left waiting for quite some time while they tried to sort things out, which really put a damper on the evening. It's incredibly frustrating to go through the effort of planning, only for the restaurant to drop the ball due to a faulty reservation system.

If you’re considering this place for a special occasion, I’d suggest looking elsewhere unless they get their reservation system sorted out. It's a shame, as the restaurant had good reviews, but our experience was far...

We hired Dolce Vita for my partners 40th birthday last week and it was the best decision I could have made!!! After looking at other potential venues, I decided to go with Dolce Vita because the owner, Dom couldn’t do enough for us and replied to my millions questions promptly! As long as we had a minimum number of guest we got an amazing deal on the hire. We asked if we could turn the restraint into a bar for the evening and when we arrived they’d removed all the furniture and set us up a dance floor! Dom also allowed us to share the DJ from his bar next door Drift. The bar staff on the night were amazing! They were helpful, respectful and made the best porn star martinis I’ve ever had! It was a perfect night and the next party I organise wil 100% be...