Santoro Restaurant — Restaurant in England

Came here for a small lunch with a friend, we'd never been in before and it was nice and quiet and looking cosy inside. We were given a nice friendly welcome and sat down quickly, drinks were ordered straight away and were given menus with our drinks. I ordered the calamari starter and my friend only ordered a coffee as he'd already had a big cooked breakfast and wasn't hungry at all. The lady (who i assume was the manager) came over to take our order, when she found out we only wanted a starter and a coffee, she openly showed her dissatisfaction at what we ordered and said to us "you're lucky the owner isn't in, this is a restaurant you know". My friend explained to her that he'd already had a big meal for breakfast but she didn't seem to change her tone, she took our menus away without an apology. We were both shocked by what she said and as a result didn't feel like we were as welcome as when we originally came in. The male waiter that took over from serving us was much more friendly and was lovely to communicate with. The calamari came out in good time and was really nice. Overall we had a nice time there but it was a shame that the lady felt the need to make such an unnecessary comment, it didn't leave a good first impression. If i come back again at least i know i'll have to order a full 3 course meal to keep the...

Some things you should be aware of:

1. The manager will call you 'honey' and use poor Italian when he seats you.
2. There is no pizza on a Friday as it's 'fish Friday'.
3. If you want chips with your steak, or any other main, you will have to pay £2.60 for the privilege as they won't swap for the new potatoes provided as standard. The food is actually really tasty. The sirloin steak I had was cooked perfectly medium-rare across the whole steak. The portions are a decent size. Everyone in our group enjoyed their food; calamari, various pastas, steak, lamb, fishcakes. Main dishes vary in price from £9 for pasta - £26 for fillet steak or rack of lamb. There is no pricing on the desserts which put me off a bit. The ice-cream is low-grade but the other dishes...

This was one of our favourite restaurants but for one reason or another, we haven’t been for a couple of years. We took Boris’s advice (this is written on a Wednesday in mid August 2020) and decided to go out. The restaurant was heaving. Social distancing??? Think again. I’m not one of those who thinks that tables should have Perspex shields between them, but the table layout was normal. They should have had 25% less tables. But the people of Yarm didn’t seem to mind. The service was slow (too many tables for the number of staff - see above). And the food wasn’t as good as it used to be. Maybe when things return to the old normal, it will be back...