Delifonseca Dockside — Restaurant in Liverpool

I'll stick to the facts. We went for a meal on Friday night. No problems. Great service. Our boy, 8, has to eat gluten free. They don't have great (or any, really) gluten free options on the menu. Not a big problem. The chef said he could make a kid's pulled beef sandwich with gluten free bread. Perfect, thank you. The food was good. The restaurant charged me the full £22 adult price for my son's meal. Still didn't care. We had a good time. Bill was over £100 for a family of 4 (two adults, one 8 year old, one 3yr old). So, pricey, but hey, service was good and we were staying in the Travelodge opposite, with zero food options so, really, at this point I'm thinking the Delifonseca is a Godsend. An expensive Godsend, but we have somewhere to have an evening meal and a breakfast. There's a shop attached, so we bought our son some gluten free breakfast cereal for the morning, in case we need it. So far, so good. But...

...In the morning we go for breakfast at the Delifonseca. The breakfast menu isn't cheap, but this place does decent food and is conveniently located. We ask if there are gluten free breakfast options. There aren't. No problem. We ask if we can have beans on gluten free toast. We're told the kitchen has run out of gluten free bread and there are no other options. OK, it is what it is. We ask if we can have a bowl of milk and we'll put in our own cereal from the shop. Our waitress isn't sure. Says we can't bring our own food in. I explain the restaurant has failed to order enough gluten free bread, so considering we have no options, surely us putting some cereal in a bowl so our son doesn't go hungry should be agreeable. Bear in mind, my wife and I, plus our daughter are all eating from the menu and our son would have ice cream for a dessert. And if the restaurant wanted to charge me for a breakfast for my son, I would have paid it. I was going to have the full breakfast, my wife would have had similar. Our daughter something smaller. Plus coffees, juice etc. Plus, we'd already spent over £100 the night before. Our brekkie bill would have been something around £70-80. We would have eaten at the Delifonseca every night and had brekkie every morning. So, 3 nights left. £300. 4 brekkies, £300. So this place was going to get around £600 from us during our visit. More like £700, if you add items purchased from the shop over our stay.

Anyway, back to the story, our waitress still isn't sure. I say not to worry, can we speak to the manager. I'm sure once the manager realises the details, it's a no-brainer. They can't provide a gluten free option. We have one, purchased from their own shop. Charge us what you like. On with the breakfast. The waitress returns and says the manager said no. I said 'so we have to leave because we can't feed our son?'. The waitress said yes. I said to the waitress, 'you are OK, not your fault, but your manager is an idiot'.

And that was that. So a 1 star review - for the manager's ignorance. And for the manager's failure/s in basic food ordering in the first place, which created the situation. And for generally the place not being run by what I would consider a kind...

Quite possibly the worst service I have ever encountered. Arrived as a party of 9, sat outside enjoying the sun. Went to get drinks at the bar but was told it was table service only - OK, I know a lot of places do that and that's fine AS LONG AS YOU SERVICE THE TABLES. Not once did a waitress pop over to see if we needed anything so we ended up stood at the door, calling over our order so she could put it on the system. Service was so bad, I asked them to remove the service charge(which I would never normally do). Sunday I felt a bit guilty that I was too harsh, so I thought we could go over for breakfast (party of 4 this time) which apparently stopped serving at 11.30. OK, not a big deal but then was told lunch didn't start until 12.15. OK, no problem, we'll have a couple of orange juices while we wait. I sat and watched our drinks order getting warm on the bar for about 10/15 minutes (it really wasn't busy) and then when they were brought over the waitress informed us that she'd forgotten it was Sunday and lunch actually started at 12.30 sigh Time was getting to be a factor so a couple of cold starters would have to do. Again, our orders took so long to come out, people who came in after us were having cooked mains before us! When they did arrive, they were nice but way pricey for what they were. Utterly disappointed as other people's orders looked...

Don’t normally bother with reviews, everybody gives 5* for everything these days, so providing you do the bare minimum, 5* it appears to be……HOWEVER! Firstly I have no affinity with or know anybody involved with Delifonseca, nor were we asked to leave a review. What a gem of a place Delifonseca is, superbly run by the very excellent Tom. Suggested wine choices, nibbles, lots of conversation, he showed us his scrapbook from his birthday trip to San Sebastion, this guy is passionate about food, wine and customer service and knows his stuff, but in an ordinary, helpful and unpretentious way. Excellent menu and daily specials, too much wine later, we had starters, which were excellent, then fish and chips which were superb. Back the next morning for breakfast, they warned us there may be a wait because of how busy they were, which I don’t mind as long as you know. Breakfast really good, served by a lady who had retired, but come back in that morning because they were short staffed and busy. Tom must be a very good manager to get retired staff to do that. We cannot recommend this place highly enough - please open a sister version here in...