Goodfare Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in London

I came here with my mother after we had done our shopping in Camden.

We sat outside, although not a good view the weather was nice and it was pretty quiet as well.

We had starters of octopus sauteed with olive oil, garlic and chilli served on a bed of baby spinach leaves, calamari served with tartare sauce and garlic bread and olives. I really enjoyed the calamari, it was cooked lovely, it wasn't chewy and the tartare sauce wasn't too tangy either so it didn't overpower the calamari. I have been to a lot of places were the tartare sauce is too strong and you lose the flavour of the calamari but this was cooked beautifully. It was my first time trying octopus so I have nothing to compare it to although I found the octopus chewy which I wasn't very fond of. The garlic bread and olives were nice, nothing to shout about but wasn't horrible, a good small starter (although we did have three). All three dishes were of very generous sizes as well.

For our main course we had lasagne. My eyes were too big for my stomach and I ordered the chips with mine. They are very generous with their portion sizes because the lasagne was packed with meat, sauce and pasta, I know I am a small person but just the lasagne on it's own was more than enough. Very well cooked. The dish was delicious.

The chips were pretty bog standard, although I didn't eat a lot of them they weren't horrible but not amazing.

Dessert I had apple and almond crumble and custard. I had been dying for some crumble and custard for ages so I was excited to find a custard dessert. The crumble tasted lovely, it was cooked lovely (not burnt) and had a hint of cinnamon which I like in my crumble. For the first time in my life though I found that there was too much crumble and not enough apple. Maybe it was just the portion I had but I barely had any apple which was disappointing. However I cannot fault it because it tasted good and so did the custard.

We had coffee afterwards which was nice. For all the food we ate our meal was pretty cheap as well. We paid less than £100 which I was impressed by. We drank wine and other alcoholic drinks as well.

The service there was great as well, very attentive but didn't swarm around us constantly. Although getting the attention of someone when you wanted it was difficult sometimes. Overall they were all very friendly and nice.

The only thing I will warn about is if you are sitting outside expect people to ask you for money. This happened to us a few times. Nothing to do with Al Parco but just be warned if you feel uncomfortable with strangers asking you for money it probably isn't the best idea to sit outside.

*On...

We decided to give this restaurant a chance as we always go for chain restaurants. The food was outstanding; we had the best meatballs we had ever tasted. However, the service was terrible, which does surprise me looking at the other comments here.

As we entered the restaurant, it was not clear if we should have seated ourselves or waited to be seated. After a few moments of hesitation, I asked a barmaid if we should seat ourselves. She then asked another member of staff to seat us. This member of staff then came from behind the counter and told us to sit where we liked, which was fine but the whole interaction was rather awkward. Once sat, we browsed the menu and ordered our food and drinks. We both ordered the tagliatelle and meatballs, however, I wanted mine with spaghetti. When i aksed the waiter for this, he raised his eyebrows and looked like i had deeply offended him! That did not fill me with much joy and definitely came across as rude. It arrived in good time and as I previously mentioned, was absolutely delightful. Even better with spaghetti haha. We praised the waiter and told him the food was amazing, which he seemed pleased about. Once we had finished this, another waiter gave us dessert menus. We were not planning on having one, however, considering the main was so delicious, we decided that we would share an apple crumble. Unfortunately, this never happened as no one would serve us or even make eye contact with us. The only focus of the restaurant was to get the public in, not out. We waited and waited but knew it was not worth it in the end and the staff had made us feel uneasy so they were difficult to approach. We stood up and headed for the bar to pay our bill. The food was a very good price and we spent our journey home raving about why our own homemade meatballs never taste that good.

Overall, the service could only be described as cold and uncomfortable. Although, the food certainly did make up for the poor service. Having worked in the catering industry for five years, I know a thing or two about customer service and how restaurants work. However, there didn't appear to be any real explanation as to why our service was so bad. They were not understaffed at all, as staff were hanging about at the bar and even having a sit down outside. On the way home, we also discussed if we'd ever return. The answer is not...

We used to come here years ago when it was the under the old management and it was completely different! It felt authentic Italian, great vibe, clean, amazing food (home cooked Italian minestrone soup was incredible). We noticed over a year ago it was under new management when we popped in and the menu had been pared back. So we just had a pizza but it was very mediocre. We just assumed we had caught the new management on an off day. Everyone has off days. We went in again today and had a rude waitress. She left us waiting for 20mins and we had to go indoors from the seating area outside to ask her if we could order. The face on it when she took our order. Our table was filthy and sticky and I had to wipe it down myself with a antibac hand wipe I had found in my bag. It was BLACK with filth after I had finished. I ordered minestrone, expecting it to be like the old days - authentic home cooked - I was given a bowl of tinned vegetable soup! For £6.99!! How they thought that they could pass off a cream coloured thick vegetable soup as an Italian minestrone just goes to show how they really don’t give a toss. The waitress, Ossie, obviously wasn’t around to send it back to, so I had to walk it back in to the restaurant myself and tell them I wasn’t paying for a Baxter’s can of vegetable soup. The whole place has gone down the pan. Definitely won’t be going back again. If you do go, take some bleach wipes to clean the table unless you like your forearms sticking to the table while a miserable waitress with an attitude problem would rather be somewhere else than...