Bella Italia - Shaftesbury Avenue — Restaurant in London

We arrived slightly early (8 minutes early) and were sat down to our table by a male member of staff who was friendly. It took ages for staff to come over to take our order. Almost 25 minutes. This included drinks. Claudia was our waitress. Ordering was relatively smooth but there was a bit of miscommunication on occasion because her accent was quite strong and difficult to understand. The starters arrived and one of our party has a dairy allergy. Two people (including the one with the allergy) ordered the tomato bruschetta. One with mozzarella and one without due to the allergy. The starters eventually came to the table after another long wait and only 3 arrived. One bruschetta was missing. The one that arrived was without mozzarella so we assumed it was the allergen friendly one and gave it to the person who had ordered it without cheese. 2 minutes later, the waiter appeared again and took the starter away from the table and replaced it with exactly the same but with a small red allergy flag in it. Fine. But we were still missing one starter. It took almost another 5 minutes for a member of staff to bring the original bruschetta back to the table - still missing the cheese. By this point we couldn’t raise the issue because not once did any member of staff ask us how the starters were. When Claudia came to clear the table I asked her politely to removed the added mozzarella from the bill which must have caused her confusion. She was rude in the way she spoke to us, especially me with this situation. She didn’t seem to understand what we were trying to tell her until I broke it down and slowly explained it. She then mumbled something under her breath and walked away. To add at this point also, 3 of us had empty drinks and did not have a chance to ask for another one because she walked off and didn’t ask if we needed one. The mains then took ages to arrive. The pasta dishes were warm, not hot - like they had been sat under a lamp for a while. When the other mains arrived I asked for some water for the table (this was 25 minutes after we had empty glasses). She said ‘yes’ and then asked if we wanted cheese on our meals which we politely said no to. She then said ‘okay’ and walked off. Nobody came to check on the mains and again, we couldn’t get the attention of any staff because they were nowhere to be seen and not approachable. In this time, Claudia also knocked a drink over another customer. I was crying at the table because of the whole experience and we just wanted to leave as quickly as we could. Claudia came to collect our plates and brought the bill over… with a very generous £14.15 tip on it. I asked her to remove the service charge and she said ‘okay’ again. We paid and left. Nothing else said. Needless to say, I am very very disappointed in our visit as I have never had an issue with Bella italia before. Also, the women’s toilets were vile - it was clear the hand drier wasn’t working so there were bits of toilet roll all over the floor and rubbish overflowing in the bins. I would not recommend this...

Excellent waiting staff & nice drinks. Good Food Yet Overall Dining Experience Ruined By The Manager! So NO, I would not recommend going here full stop.

I have posted pictures. My dessert was delicious!!!

Back to the Manager: What an impolite, poorly spoken, certainly sour, ill-mannered man. No customer service skills. No respect in his tone and a very bad attitude towards me.

Is it because I am Black? Who Cares!!!

Less than a minute after being asked if we would like to order more drinks by the wonderfully bright and cheerfully dispositioned waitress - This man asked us to leave, because in 7 mins there is another booking - We still had drinks to finish and praise be we did not order any more! We decided to leave in 3 was amazed at how he spoke to me after I declined to pay the service charge but insisted the waitress get £10. tip (cash in hand) he came over to pree…

This man then had the gumption to inform us he is the Manager - and what?

He Is Too Rude and Out of Order Yet Fortunate We Left The Brixton Rapid Reply & Rass Response At Home... Instead we simply smiled and waved as we have learned how to deal with people like him.... shoo & wave them away!

Its 2022 now so we had to laugh after him and leave..never to return! Yes...we truly had to Laugh!!

The Manager needs a re-fresher course in customer service.

The Manager needs to learn how to respect ALL shades of people - not just smile and shimmy for the white customers. I am a paying customer. Money is money and we all bleed the same...

Waited over an hour for food for Sunday lunch even though we were one of the first ones to arrive - other tables that were later than us had their food first. Turns out it was because we ordered mozzarella sticks…they did not put our orders for our mains till after we had finished the mozzarella sticks, and by that time the restaurant had filled up so this meant that our mains order was behind every other table, meaning we were last to receive our food in the restaurant even though we were earliest to arrive.

When we first brought it up, there was no apology. Instead, the server implied it was our fault for ordering starters and that the burger I ordered takes 20 minutes. She never warned us that this would be the case when we made our order btw. She also said she had originally asked us whether we wanted the starter first or the food altogether with the mains and she said we said we wanted starters first…so it’s our fault (actually she never did ask us that, and we always say “altogether” everytime we get asked that question because we have young kids eating with us).

Basically it’s one thing if there was a miscommunication and the food took longer than expected, but a whole other thing for the first response to be defensive gaslighting with no apology. To be fair, the server did apologize when the food came after but the whole experience had already left a bad taste for us.

Food was ok, burger was bland and not well cooked but pasta...