Gran Caffe Lark Lane — Restaurant in Liverpool

As someone who lives on lark lane, I was so excited when gran caffe opened as it’s right on my doorstep and somewhere I wanted to make a regular spot. I went for the first time yesterday and the service was appalling, which is a massive shame because it’s put me off trying it again despite really liking the look of the menu. We went in for a bit of a treat and ending up just having a stressful experience that we didn’t enjoy.

My partner and I arrived wanting to just sit in and have a hot drink each & split a sweet treat. To start with there is no clear system for people dining in vs ordering to take away, e.g. a standing sign telling you where to wait to be seated. We queued up like everyone else and when we got to the front, we asked for a drinks menu at the counter (we would have needed this regardless of sitting in or taking away as we couldn’t see the options displayed anywhere). The manager politely asked if we’d like to sit in and advised us to wait outside. It wasn’t ideal sitting in the cold but we didn’t mind as it was quite busy and crammed inside and there wasn’t anywhere else to wait. After about 10 minutes we were offered a table which was being cleaned by a member of staff. The place was fairly busy, but definitely not unmanageable for the amount of staff there were to tables. We knew what we wanted straight away since we’d been sat outside with menus for a while, but it took over half an hour for anyone to come to our table to take our order, which is just an unacceptable amount of time for somewhere this small. The staff members weren’t particularly rushed off their feet or working quickly which made it all the more frustrating. It was only when I gave up waiting and got up to order at the counter that the staff noticed and came over, with no apology given for the wait. We ordered two drinks and a sundae to split, and after another fairly long wait our drinks finally arrived, but we didn’t get the sundae. Again we waited and waited, wanting to give the staff a chance as we appreciated they had other tables to tend to. Eventually we’d finished our drinks (which we drank slowly so that we could have them with our dessert) so this point I asked if it was on its way and was told 2 minutes. After waiting another 10-15 minutes with no sign of it, we gave up and asked to cancel it and just pay. Overall we spent about an hour there when all we’d ordered was two drinks and a dessert, and spent the majority of the time waiting for things or having to chase for them, which meant it wasn’t an enjoyable experience and we just wanted to leave. When we paid the staff member said “sorry about that” so they knew we’d had a bad experience, but that’s all that was said.

I’m hoping this just them finding their feet with being a new addition to lark lane, and that the service will improve in future - at that point i might give it another try and hopefully have a better review, but I wouldn’t go there again in the...

Where do I start...

We got seated and ordered around 2 small plates each at around 7.00pm as we wanted to also purchase some desserts each. While we waited we could overhear two other tables speaking to the server reagarding issues with their order, this didnt give us hope with ours. We ordered rather quickly but ended up waiting around 45 mins for the food even though the place wasn't very busy.

The food, which arrived without issues, were all very tasty and well presented. Unfortunately, we had some difficulties with some of our orders; we ordered a Chicken Kiev plate and when the food arrived we were instead brought Pork Meatballs. We asked to swap this and get the Chicken Kiev instead and about 20 minutes later once we were all finished with the other meals the server brought out the exact same plate ! The pork meatballs again. We ended up saying to leave it since we were all finished and wanted to just pay and leave.

We also ordered a calamari dish which wasn't delivered with the other plates and instead arrived after we all had finished our plates (around 20 minutes after the other plates had been brought out)

Even though the place seemed clean with lovely decorations, the toilets were quite disgusting, there was no soap and looked unclean. We also had a dirty knife and bits of food under our table.

The dishes which arrived without issues were quite nice and pleasantly displayed, it's just a shame the experience was very chaotic, it seemed like none of the servers knew what they were doing and were constantly firefighting with the issues. We left quite hungry still. They gave us one free dessert at the end as an apology. I have heard the breakfast and lunch is good but I would avoid...

Really sad to be posting this because one member of staff really ruined the experience who i can see from the reviews others have also experienced this. He was rude not only to myself and my elderly mum when we had literally just walked through the door which i could have got over, but he was also belittling another member of staff in front of us and insulting their intelligence. When there are so many 5 star places on lark lane with the most incredible staff who treat each other with respect this was awful to see. Having worked in hospitality myself i know everyone has bad days, this was not that, they were not treating the other members of staff with basic levels of human respect and clearly thought they were above the rules of human decency. I really hope the member of staff in question feels able to speak out to more senior management as I can only assume the person insulting them was a manager to feel they could get away with this behaviour so publicly. Even with this aside, when the team member in question did begin to take our order they were incredibly rude to myself and visibly frustrated at my simple question about any items that may contain nuts (i didn't think this was that outrageous of a question). This is such a shame as the other members of the team and the food were lovely but I cant condone bullying in...