Caffe Mamma — Restaurant in London

I have mixed feelings about this restaurant; it certainly feels like a family-run Italian restaurant - it is very cosy and feels like visiting an ‘Italian’ friend for dinner plus great ambience. The staff is very friendly and helpful as well and the house red wine is very decent.

In terms of the food we ordered a few starters to share and the funghi mirele was just delicious; absolutely beautiful but the fried Calamari was soggy; the rest of the starters were good.

For mains we ordered the ‘scaloppine al funghetto’, the swordfish (one of the specials) and one of the pasta dishes. In terms of the portions, they were actually very good portions with vegetables included so overall good value. The veal was good (not the best I have eaten, but to a good standard); the friend having the pasta really liked it but my other friend who normally eats everything on the table said the swordfish was overdone and not very tasty; so in terms of food: very good value and a hit and miss with the food.

Now, what I really didn’t like about the restaurants is the Deliveroo people coming in and out every three minutes and passing right next to you (it is a small but long restaurant) so that really ruins a bit of the ambience; plus the tables are very close to each other so we ended up talking to a couple sitting next to us and they were perfectly fine but it wasn’t part of the plans.

So overall it is a good restaurants and I will probably go back – but...

Very disappointed with the experience. This was our first time at Caffè Mamma. We had made reservations and when we arrived we were greeted by a lovely waitress Isabella. We asked if we could be seated at one of the 4 seat tables at the side of the restaurant because we didn't feel comfortable in the centre and the 4 seater table was very cramped and tight for 4 adults. She politely said sure and took as to the table on the side. Suddenly another host by the name of Joseph shouted across the restaurant at Isabella and told her to give us the small table in the middle. I addressed Joseph and asked if we could please sit at the side. Without allowing me to finish my sentence he said 'No, No, No, go to the middle!' Then he shouted at Isabella for taking us to the other table. I felt so sorry for her as she was clearly very embarrassed. I appreciate there may have been a reason we could not sit on the side table but there is a way to politely communicate that to customers rather than insulting them and shouting in a rude manner. Anyone who speaks in that way to customers and staff is disgraceful. We reluctantly decided to stay and eat there. The food was overpriced and average. Definitely not restaurant quality. Isabella's service was excellent and that's why I've given 2 stars otherwise should be zero. Isabella should work somewhere where they respect staff and customers and value good service!...

Thought that we would try this place as it always seems busy and is pretty local, so we booked ahead to make sure to get a table. However, upon arriving despite most of the restaurant being quite, we were sat out of the way in some additional plastic seating that they had put outside of the next door unit.

After waiting around twenty minutes to be initially waited on, the rest of the service was slow and again we had to ask two servers and wait around twenty minutes further for the bill to arrive at the end of the meal.

The server seemed to rush this and was eager to get the payment and even made it difficult to see the bill but as something didn’t add up and he had already suggested rounding it by another £4 to make it easier for him to split the bill. I asked for him to hand it over, This is when we realised that they had added two charges for wine (nobody had ordered) and also skewed the discount (Eat out to help out) to be able to charge more by only deducting it from the mains.

When we questioned the server on this, they stated they were busy and that we should work it out for ourselves and then let them know if we wanted a refund for the over charged amount.

Wether they are purposefully adding items onto people’s bills to charge more money and hope nobody realises or if this was indeed a mistake, when combined with the lacking service it made the overall experience very...