Rocca Mediterranean Kitchen & Cocktail Bar — Restaurant in Mid Sussex

Honestly this is the worst review I have ever had to write.

I have visited Rocca 4/5 times now, and the service only gets worse. The first time was a quiet night so everything was fine, quick service and good food. From there on out I have only faced the most unfriendly rude staff, over hour wait times just for one course, and food I'd ordered being forgotten about.

Every table in my area was asked how everything is, except us. Every table was brought extra bread without asking, except us. Then when we asked for the bread, it was never brought. Every table had finished their starter, main, and desert, before we'd ever got our mains. After 55 minutes we asked how long our food would take, and a rude waitress replied 'it's coming out', not even an apology for the huge wait time. One waitress before came over to say I'll check on your order now, and then never came back. I'm also certain the manager was avoiding us knowing it was terrible service, as he checked on everyone else and brought their cheques personally, but again not ours. We were given free drinks after complaining so I suppose that's a plus, but does not excuse treating regular customers as a burden. The delay and treatment is just unacceptable, especially as we hadn't even ordered starters. Besides, even if the fish does take 40 minutes to grill for 'health and safety', what about the extra half an hour we waited?

A third time I experienced this wait was on the birthday of a friend, with four of us total. Though we had booked we had a long wait for the table, and instead of being offered a seat at the bar or the option of drinks, we just had to stand around. When complaining on this occasion the manager refused free drinks, and instead offered one slice of desert, which we didn't even get to choose, cut into four slices.

Real shame as the food is good, and pina coladas excellent. If you go in the week on a non-busy night, I'm sure you'll have an ok experience....

I figured I may as well start this while I’m still sat at the table since we’ve been waiting over an hour for food, not a great start. Not to mention we stood waiting for 10 min to even be noticed let alone seated.

So we’re back home after that shocking ordeal, let me start by saying I’ve been here numerous times before & it’s always been mediocre, but decent enough to return. This time was terrible, wait times were insane, there was an issue with the order apparently which meant the kitchen never even started the food, but we weren’t made aware of this until we mentioned the wait time at the end.

Atmosphere is okay, music is very repetitive, almost like elevator music & a little too loud, plus it is definitely far too dark in some parts of the restaurant.

The food is okay, but portions certainly lack & now that the prices have gone up, it’s without a doubt over priced, in comparison to the quality. The attentiveness & quality of staff seems to depend on whether they’re having a good day or a bad day, but for the most part they’re pretty cold, blunt & autonomous. They offer a cocktail menu which has good choice, but god forbid you ask to change a spirit or mixer in the cocktail, the “mixologist” is incapable, as in his words “that sounds very difficult”

All in all, if you don’t really care about where you spend your money & just want to fill a void in your gut then pop in, but I recommend going at an off peak time where you’re likely to have a...

A chaotic mess! Having had our order taken by one waitress, our starters arrived. After 5-10 minutes we then had 3 different waitresses coming to the table within 60 seconds to clear our starters because "our mains are ready". This was despite us clearly still eating the starters and them being half eaten. This made us feel very rushed. We wanted to eat the food we're paying for and not have it taken away because you've messed up the timing! Once the starters were cleared we were waiting for about 10 minutes for the mains to arrive...? Most of the meals were fine however one of our party ordered the grilled octopus and it was inedible. It was like a piece of tough rubber and it was not even possible to cut it. Having informed one of the waitresses to this, the solution to this was for the 4th waitress of the evening to bring a steak knife! Unbelievable! Having finally been informed of what was going on the manager came over to apologise and ask if there was something else we wanted, but we declined. The octopus was removed from the bill with a small discount and a free desert was sent to our table. This gesture made me give 2 stars instead of 1. What a mess and chaotic operation that is being run. I felt that if we had one dedicated waitress then most of our experience would have...