Luciano by Gino D'Acampo — Restaurant in London

The food (bar the beef as shown in photos) was lovely, but the service was appalling. Wrong drink brought for my son as the first issue, drinks order took a long time / not offered (he came and offered to take the food order first and I said can we order drinks please - we already had the still water bottle which was offered as we sat down via teh host). Then there was confusion and a discussion about my son's drink despite it being on the menu (orangade), my red wine was not brought with the other drinks nor communicated as to where it was. I had to go and ask, the waiter then said "he's trying to find a bottle of it" when it was brought there was no apology. No top up offered of drinks at all, I went to the bar to order another glass. Then the main issue being my mother's roast - she said when ordering: are there any root vegetables, I don't like them. He said: no just potatoes and brocolli, we checked twice more once whilst he was still doing the order to clarify "no carrots etc." are you sure? And he said yes yes, just potatoes and brocolli. We thought we'd best check again when they orangade mess up happened and again he assured us, it was fine no root vegetables.

The mains arrived, my son had ordered chips and buttered peas with his chicken - he got brocolli (not even on the kid's menu as a side option!) my mother had her plat put down with swede, carrots and parsnips smach bang in the middle of the plate. We said no, we asked three times for no root veg, they took the plate away never explaining, but apologising for another mess up, that they were going to re-do the whole thing. We would have been happy given how long we'd waited overall and had a show to get to, to just take it off ourselves or for them to replate with the other food. When the manager came over to apologise, she assured us it would be 3 mins and that they have to take the plate and re-do when they take. 10 mins and the new dish arrives, with the beef in this state (photos) raw in parts, full or fat and utterly unedible. Even the table next to us were appalled and said they would not eat it.They offered to re-do it again which we refused given how much time was lost. The first cut of beef plated was perfect and they just binned it due to their poor service error and a terrible waiter who had messed up so much of our orders. Never returning - my advice to you is learn how to communicate better with your guests. Would you like some drinks, would you like some more drinks, I'm sorry the wine is coming, we're just grabbing a new bottle, would you like some sauces etc. it's so simple.

To add: the restaurant was circa 30% capacity, it was less than this when we first arrived. They did take 50% off the bill and no charge for the organage, or the two mains with issues. My pasta and scallops...

We went to Lucianos on Friday night for dinner and then again for breakfast the morning after as it was part of the bed and breakfast from the hotel ‘ME’ that we were staying at. To begin with when we first arrived for dinner, there was nobody waiting at the entrance to greet guests and we were confused as to where to find someone to sit us to our table. A waiter walked past us and didn’t say “hello” or anything of the sort and greeted us with “give me a second to find someone”. Once someone was found, they asked the booking name and sat us to a table. We did get a lovely smile and hello from a server but that was about the only smile we saw all night. Once sat, we had some water for the table and then waited around 15 minutes before getting asked what we wanted for drinks and food. I felt that the server was quite unprofessional with us, never making eye contact, never came to check on how our food was, and took a while between courses to come and clear food. There was no conversation made and it all felt quite forced. Bare in mind it wasn’t overly busy in the restaurant at this time (9-10pm) and nobody seemed rushed off their feet. I noticed waiters and waitresses stood chatting while we were waiting to be served, table cleared, for the bill etc. This all made the experience immediately less enjoyable and made us quite irritable as we couldn’t relax properly for our evening meal. Onto breakfast. We had higher hopes as it was a new day and a separate experience, but were severely let down as the experience was worse than the night before. I noticed multiple tables getting annoyed and having to ask for missing food and drinks just as we had to, and I never received one of the hot drinks that I ordered despite us reminding staff that we were missing drinks. Our food came cold as it was clearly sat waiting to be served for a while (guests can see the food sat waiting). Our poor server was rushed off his feet, attending to multiple tables as other staff sauntered around like they had nothing to do. The food was okay on both occasions, and well presented, nothing to complain about in particular other than it being cold in the morning, but something needs to be done about the service!! I couldn’t believe my eyes. And the amount of waiting for food and drinks ruined everything for us. I’m not one to usually complain, and will usually let things slide, but when you’re paying for “higher end” food and service you expect to receive high end food and service. Having previously worked in hospitality in a high quality restaurant, and knowing how to be simply polite, professional and attentive with guests, I was appalled with what I had witnessed. Sincerely, two disappointed guests of the gino...

UPDATE: just had a lovely chat with the General Manager, Giovanni Galluccio, He completely understood where I was coming from and is going to look into the points I raised. Things happen, and sometimes things don’t go as planned that’s life, but it is lovely to speak to someone who cares, and wants to put things right. Has to be 5* for customer service aftercare.

I have to say, I would definitely visit again, after having spoken to Giovanni, sometimes a second chance is needed.

Thank you again for your prompt response and resolution of my concerns, which deserves an increase from the 2* stars I gave.

Original review below

Restaurant beautiful. Most of the staff attentive and professional. The atmosphere was really good. Such a shame that the food let it down. The two pasta dishes were very cool round the edges and just warm in the centre, so rather than send them back, if you mixed it all together the dishes were then warm. I had steak and fries , the fries were just warm and the steak was cold on the outer edges and cool in the middle. Clearly these meals had been sat waiting some time after being cooked before being served to us.

I mentioned to a gentleman who I don’t think was a waiter, he appeared to be a more senior member of staff, that my food was bearly warm, he took the plate off me, there was no apology, in fact he looked a bit put out. He quite quickly returned my meal, it was the same piece of steak I had given him meaning I was now eating ‘warmed up’ food, on the plus side I got a cup of hot fries, but still no apology

So all in all, all three meals were at a temperature of cold to warm. Two pasta meals were eaten warm and the other meal was a warmed up steak. This is not what I would have expected from a restaurant of this calibre. It will be a long time before we travel back down to London as we live around 300 miles away, but such a shame we will try somewhere else next time.

The stars are to the restaurant decor, atmosphere, bar service and all but 1 member of staff, this would have been 5 stars but the food dragged it down., if this was just for food it would have been a 1 stars as no one should have to eat or be served...