Sambuca Hartlepool restaurant — Restaurant in England

Great food but feel like it needs to focus on it's unconscious biased/ diversity skills and attention to detail.

For context. I was staying in the area for work so ventured out for my evening meal with my colleague. We were seated straight away but immediately I was asked what costume I was wearing, if it were Halloween etc. (My outfit consisted of a dress with a oriental print with black cats on it because I think life is too short not to express yourself) also despite telling them this is who I am it just made it feel extra awkward. Then a minute later we were asked for drinks when we had literally sat down.

Anyway ignorance aside the menu was vast and the 3 course menu was amazing value. I opted for the sea bass for main and garlic mushrooms for starter.

The starter was nicely presented with a good portion. After taking everything away they delivered the main and asked if we needed anything, in mid-conversation I stated no but realised a few moments later we had no cutlery. A kind waitress rectified that. Anyway, the sea bass was well cooked with crispy skin and what I paid would normally get you one fillet and not two. For dessert I chose ice cream expected it to be a small scoop but nope it was served as a sundae.

Overall the setting was quite loud with music and people and the service felt uncomfortable. The food however was very generous of size and...

Walked out ..that's a first. Staff asked us what we wanted to drink..I said a drink menu would help. Ordered drink had to say again what we wanted lady served us was rushing. Had to correct dink order.. Then received drink order, and she rushed off. Wrong order. Caught their attention and told them..that order was wrong..no apology..then wine that was wrong whisked away by another staff member, most probably to whoever it was for??. It wasn't massively busy, and had only told staff member what I we wanted to drink a minute beforehand..

We walked out because of the rush that staff member was in, thinking if they can't get a simple drink order right, we didn't fancy getting a meal order wrong.. Manager come over to ask if everything was okay I replied no ..and we walked out. ...we have had some great meals in here in the past ..but the attitude of server and rushed service was not good..thankfully the wine that was not ours had not been touched by us and god know who ended up with it, as it disappeared faster then a magian pulling a rabbit ...

Honestly I really enjoyed this place however there were some set backs which really ruined my night. We had made a booking 2 weeks in advanced and once we showed up they told us that they didn’t have our booking and we ended up waiting 30 mins for our table, the waiter woman was rude when I asked for hilumi instead of chicken in my pasta saying that that’s “impossible” and gave me a weird look. Once the food was being served we had asked which one was which and the waiter stuck his head in the bowl to smell the plates to see which is which. Once I got my right plate the pasta was amazing however once I got to the bottom there was a POOL of oil in the bottom which was unavoidable and I had to leave the rest of my dish even after soaking up some of the oil with a tissue ( pictured shown) Overall this was very nice cheep Italian food and it was only my food out of the 7 people I was with which had this.

24 hour later review- I was shitting all night on the toilet and throwing up… food...