Lievito Madre Pizzeria — Restaurant in London

Unfortunately, my experience in this restaurant was disappointing. The food I ordered was simple, nothing great, and it did not meet my expectation, such a normal dining experience at this restaurant in terms of the food itself. However, I was very disappointed with the service. After eating my pizza, I asked them for more drink and they asked to finish my meal quickly and leave because I didn't order additional food and only had a drink, and they were waiting for more people this night. This made me feel unwelcome and rushed. It's important for restaurants to treat all customers with respect and not prioritize sales over customer satisfaction. They also told me that after eating my pizza not before, very disappointed. I was left with a negative impression in this place. ——————————————————————— Hi Owner,

Hi. Thank you for taking your time to respond to my complaint about your customer service.

I went there with a friend named Giusepp who made the reservation by phone at 6pm on February 24th. Your staff did not warn him over the phone that probably his customers should leave after the meal because his place was overbooked this weekend.

Let's be clear, your reservation website doesn't say anything about leaving after the meal because your restaurant is full on weekends or something like that. Unfortunately, your policies about allowing your customer to stay and enjoy a drink are not working properly, because your staff was very clear in telling us that we could not stay and order another drink, even though we were finishing our pizza. We only had one drink and we wanted to have a second drink, we were not stay very long for sure, but your staff told us that after the meal we have to leave because they had more customers waiting. A member of staff took another order for a second drink, but was told by your team that it wouldn't be possible. Understood your overbooking, but it was your business, not mine, and your team should have handle that situation without affecting the customer and should have also warned your customers, as well. We were very surprised because we were not notified even though when we arrived at the door and told your staff about our reservation at 6 pm. They waited until we were finishing our meal to say to us that unpleasant and unprofessional comment. We have been to many restaurants in different countries and we have never felt as uncomfortable as that day.

——————————————————————— Last update:

Thanks for your last comments below, which are not entirely correct. Let me be clear, it seems that someone at your restaurant deleted or failed to write this reservation from a phone number that ended...053 between 11:50 a.m. and 12:00 m that day. It must be on the call list for that day. I see this problem is going nowhere and is a waste of time. My friend didn't receive any text messages from your team and we assumed that everything was fine. As same as other restaurants do when someone makes a reservation by phone. When we arrived at the restaurant no one told us that the table was or would be reserved within 1h and 1./2 minutes due to the busy time that day. Therefore, we didn't know that we would only have 1 hour and 30 minutes to eat our food and drink. Your staff should politely offer or not a table and must tell the customer that the table is or probably would be reserved in 1 1/2 hours as most restaurants do in this situation. The fact is that no one told us anything about the busy night and table reservations that day, neither on the phone nor at the beginning of the dinner and they waited for the moment when we were finishing our pizza with not pudding, and ordered another drink to tell us that. Your hospitality policy doesn't work properly. That's why we felt uncomfortable that day, we paid the...

Truly awful service.

Mainly - signs outside say ‘2 for £10’ on certain drinks between 5-7pm. My partner and I ordered 2 Pimm’s just after 6.

Yet when it came time for the bill to be paid, the waitress said she couldn’t find Pimm’s on the system (convenient as Pimm’s is in the offer) and put them through as cocktails with no offer. When queried she said it was ‘2 for £10 per head’. She swore blind that the sign outside said this and pointed to a menu we weren’t provided with which did set this out, and said we had to ask for the offer for it to work. Madness - never heard such nonsense and as our server why on earth did it not occur to her that we’d need this information? I’ve worked in hospitality and while I know mistakes happen, businesses should respect their customers and take the hit sometimes. She didn’t resolve the issue and was very combative.

The waitress said the outdoor sign did stipulate this restriction on the offer. This is not true. I told the waitress this - at first she went outside and said there was no outdoor sign (despite it being very clearly there), then said that the sign did contain the stipulation and I was wrong. When she was shown a photo I had taken she said that it wasn’t her fault as she had allegedly written another sign which did set out the conditions. That’s not the point - a business advertising an offer should uphold it. It’s as simple as that. She eventually refunded the money after I pointed out how misleading the outside sign was and how utterly ridiculous it was for customers to be enticed with an offer that the business didn’t set out the Ts & Cs of.

I left thoroughly disappointed and frankly astounded to have been effectively called a liar and then expected to just accept a totally misleading deceit.

The other reviews for this restaurant all seem to focus on the service. It’s truly, truly awful and I will be advising everyone to steer clear.

On top of this issue: Nobody greeted us or directed us to sit down. It was 10 minutes before we were given menus. The waitress serving didn’t give anyone water (clearly a mistake as a gentleman came out and gave a bottle to...

I am lost for words at how bad the customer service is at this restaurant. Never ever go here.

From start to finish, the experience was terrible. I was invited back as my first experience was so bad - I contacted them and they offered a discount if I wanted to book a table again. The food was better this time, but all the staff got very argumentative about the bill, refusing to give a discount for 3 of us, saying only 2 of us could have the discount. My original booking was for 3 and 4 of us came in again, buying a bottle of wine, cocktails, multiple courses etc, with a bill of £100+ at an otherwise very quiet time for the restaurant (lunchtime service). In the email the manager said ‘Please allow me to make up for this and come for dinner again where you can have 50% off all your food just to say sorry for your disappointing experience.’ It doesn’t matter if there has been a miscommunication - this is the responsibility of the restaurant to fix.

All staff members were arguing with me at the front of the restaurant, being rude, dismissive and overall aggressive in front of my friends and other customers. They never once apologised for any miscommunication. In the original email, where I said how bad the food was, the manager responded with ‘we get quite a few complaints about the service’ so obviously this has also been noted by other people.

To invite someone back and then give them an even worse experience is certainly ironic. I’ll never return here because of how nasty the staff are and I’d advise anyone else to steer clear. To have to tell the staff that I am not arguing and I just want to pay the bill and for them to keep on berating me is a completely unacceptable way to talk to another person, let alone a customer who had bought in £100+ worth of business at a Friday lunchtime service. It was evidently more important to them to be ‘right’ rather than give a good experience. Avoid...