Salvo's — Restaurant in Leeds

First of all, I’d like to mention that the food was excellent and if you were to come on a regular day I’m sure you’d have a great experience.

I booked a table for two at salvos on Valentine’s Day, which came with a set menu of £40 each. £20 you would pay in advance as a deposit. This was taken off the final bill. I planned the evening to allow plenty of time for the meal, as we had reservations in Leeds city centre afterwards.

Coming into the restaurant, we were greeted at the door and shown to our table. The person doing so was not very pleasant, didn’t show a smile, didn’t talk much or offer to take our coats.

We then waited 15 minutes and no one had came to take a drinks order. I had to ask myself for this. We understood that it’s a very busy day and so tried to be positive, even though three tables had come in since, all with their drinks already. Sadly it did not stop here, as we ordered starters and mains. We then saw the three tables that came in after all have their starters and mains before we had our starters. I reached out to someone again and apparently there had been a mistake. It had now been an hour since we walked through the door.

After this, the restaurant was very prompt, bringing everything as soon as they could. Sadly this effort was all too late as we were so rushed to finish everything to make our next reservation. We could not really relax to enjoy any of the food. The restaurant made their apologies but didn’t offer anything for terms of compensation.

Whenever I tried to explain everything that had happened, none of the staff would take the time to listen to me, they’d instead cut me off, apologise and get back to work. If I’m spending £100 on a meal, I expect better treatment than this. We felt ignored, unimportant and essentially just a number on their booking sheet.

Don’t come to this restaurant on special occasions. Mondays or...

Although Salvo’s is not particularly vegetarian friendly and the choice is very limited, there is one dish which for me has always been worth coming for: the Melanzane alla Parmigiana. We always try to come on a night that is not too busy, because of the ridiculously small and cramped tables for two. We decided to come the day after Valentine’s only to find that everyone else had the same idea and found ourselves squeezed into a tiny space between two large tables with noisy, loud voiced neighbours, making it impossible to enjoy a conversation of our own. After moving twice we settled on a small round table near the door which offered a degree of privacy, only to discover when it came to ordering, that my favourite dish was not available because the chef had not had time to prepare it that day, evidently because he was so busy making sure all the meat eaters, such as my husband, were well catered for first. Since there was nothing else on the menu I wanted– I dislike risotto and do not come to Salvo’s to have pasta with plain mushroom or tomato which I have at home - and there was no vegetarian option of equal stature to the aubergine dish, and no suggestions from the very busy chef as to how to remedy the situation, we left. I was so disappointed I wrote an email to Salvo’s about our experience and got a long whinging reply back from Mr Dammone telling me that Salvo’s reserves the right not to provide a dish listed on the menu and how very nasty it was of me to complain and fail to respect the fact that this was a family restaurant with forty years tradition behind it! Clearly, the fact that we took the trouble to leave our house and drive all the way to Headingley to eat at one of our favourite restaurants in expectation that what was on the menu would be available, was of absolutely of no...

Not a place to go with children. We had a sitting at 5.45 pm and no one was in the restaurant at this time. The waitress who showed us to our table was a complete misery, very unwelcoming. We asked if the kids could sit on the stairs as they were waiting to surprise their cousin on her birthday . She was rather short and said it was fine until people come in. Which is fair enough. The kids sat at the table, we brought our own Colour books and pens to keep them entertained. We don’t like giving devices at the table. There was a colouring sheet on the kids menu, however no crayons on the table or offered by the waitress at any point. Regarding the food, I had the prawn pasta which was too Al dente and cold. The kids bolognese was lumpy and wasn’t anything to rave about, my son who loves bolognese wouldn’t eat it. The rest of the food served was fine, the arancini was very good. Towards the end of the meal, we had been waiting a while to have the table cleared and waiting for someone to take our dessert order, it took ages to get someone’s attention. The kids started to get restless. They went upstairs to an empty landing just outside the toilets and were quietly chatting and looking out of the window. A young waiter, very abruptly came over to tell us that we must tell the kids to ‘calm down, it’s a restaurant’! We were all taken aback as up until then they had all been sat with us at the table! They were hardly causing havoc! The waiter couldn’t say what they had done to warrant this’telling off’! It put a huge dampener on my nieces special birthday, sadly. It doesn’t really have the atmosphere of an Italian restaurant where the staff have personalities and engage with the customers. We won’t be returning and will stick with The Flying Pizza which has more atmosphere and friendly staff that...