ASK Italian - York — Restaurant in Great Britain

My club and I booked our Christmas meal at Ask Italian this year. There was 25 of us so it was a big meal, we pre-ordered off of the Christmas menu they sent us. When we arrived we waited for 10 minutes and we were then taken to a room with 5 tables. We had asked for a table together but we made do. Our starters came and they were fine, for our main course a waiter came up to me and another girl that had ordered the same main and said “we don’t have the meal you want so I’ve brought you a pizza”. We hadn’t been notified that the meal wasn’t being served and the other girl had dietary requirements so she couldn’t have the pizza. I was quite shocked that I wasn’t going to be getting the meal I had already payed for and couldn’t believe he just brought over a pizza without asking what I wanted. He was very short and angry when I told him I didn’t want the pizza and that the other girl couldn’t have the pizza either. He grumpily walked away and brought over the menu and I ordered something else. Next to me my friend had ordered a side but after 20 minutes of waiting it still hadn’t come so he notified the same waiter. The waiter accused him of having already eaten the side and asked him if it had perhaps come on top of his main (which was a pizza, he ordered pigs in blankets as a side) which it obviously hadn’t. The waiter then showed us a printed out version of our meal spreadsheet, which didn’t have the pigs in blanket on as a side because in order to view the sides you had to use a computer or access the website online. Luckily we had the spreadsheet on our phone and showed him that it was ordered, though the waiter kept trying to argue with us! When the meal ended we asked another waitress if she could take a quick photo of us, she said no but then her manager came up and told her to help us out, she sighed the entire time and was just generally so rude to us all. We did complain at the end to the manager who was very accommodating and apologetic. We also had a lovely waitress with long blonde locs though we didn’t catch her name. Overall the service was rather poor, hardly any of the workers we helpful or accommodating and it ruined that part...

After a terrible experience on a Saturday night, our table of 13 walked out having only paid for drinks. The food was taking an eternity to arrive; we had waited over 1 hour and 20 minutes while being told '5 mins, 10 max' yet nothing ever materialised. The duty manager was rude, spoke over me when I was trying to explain my frustration, and kept telling me "that's not how it works, we're busy" when I said I didn't expect to wait over an hour to be fed having booked a table in advance. If the kitchen can't cater for such a large restaurant, why accept the booking?

The following morning I received a call from another manager at the restaurant, seemingly prompted by a poor Google review left by another member of the party, telling me he wished to put things right "before head office saw the review" so they "didn't get it in the neck"!! He offered me a free meal to apologise for the experience; I politely declined since I wasn't interested in visiting again. To which he then offered me a full refund for the drinks we paid for (~£120) in exchange for the review being removed. He took my email address and payment details but has now gone radio silent to no surprise.

I have tried to get in touch with the restaurant again to no avail, which has led me to leave this review. I have been to this restaurant twice in the past 6 years and both times it has been a sub-par experience. It wasn't our first choice of where to dine but unfortunately was the only restaurant in York that could accommodate all 13 of us after having been let down at short notice. I wish we hadn't bothered!

Suffice to say I will never visit here again, nor will I recommend it. There are a multitude more restaurants in York where you'd get much better value for money and better service - so go and spend your...

Disappointing. I chose this restaurant as the York Pass gives 20% discount on "All food" here. Great venue but the customer service was poor. I asked for a table at 8.25pm and was turned away because I didn't have a booking even though the venue was really quiet. I went back outside and made a reservation online on my phone for 5mins later then walked back in. The lady grudgingly showed us to a table and asked me to order everything online using the QR code. I explained I had a York Pass 20% discount and she said that was fine. I just ordered a pizza and my son's both ordered the three course meals for £29 each. When I came to pay, the discount hadn't been applied and I had to find the lady to explain. She arranged for the discount but it was only applied to my £15 pizza, not the three course meals. I walked back again and she told me the discount doesn't apply to the three course menus. I said we wouldn't have ordered the three course menus if I knew the discount didn't apply and it says specifically on the York Pass app that the discount applies to 'all food' at Ask Italian. She spoke to another member of staff and he agreed to apply the discount saying that they should have told us before we ordered. By applying the discount to the three course meals, he removed the discount on my pizza though. By this point I couldn't be bothered going back a third time so just paid and left. It was so quiet (about four tables when we arrived and only one other table by 9 o clock) but we were never asked if everything was ok or if we'd like to order more drinks. It just seemed an inconvenience to them to have...