Granello Lounge — Restaurant in North Hertfordshire

We visited as a family for a Birthday treat for my wife on a Friday evening about 7:30, excited about trying out what seemed a well needed shot in Didcot's bland food and drink offering. Unfortunately, the whole set up doesn't quite work just yet and the management need to make some urgent changes to get it right.

The all day casual dining concept is well tried and tested now across the industry and fits well into the Didcot location, but Berro's execution needs to be improved to match its competitors.

Will wait a while and see if the management can sort out its problems and hopefully be back as a regular.

Pros: main course food good menu choice good people friendly when you got to talk to them

Cons: Massive queue on arrival as only 2 tills and same staff make the drinks as take the orders. There were other staff available but avoided all eye contact with customers and left the servers to flounder. Just needs another till and staff to support drinks orders, even taking diners' drinks to the table to release the pressure. I saw 3 groups of 4 leave the restaurant as the queue was too slow which is lost revenue on the night and ongoing as they will go elsewhere and tell their friends etc. (Just look across the pavement and see how Nandos get the ordering right) staff were not well trained struggling with requests and clearly under pressure tables badly laid out for an evening food service. The massive queue impacts the space available for efficient table layout to maximise covers. The table sizes do not lend well to a typical evening flow of diners so groups are cramped onto unsuitable tables use of recycled and funky furniture looks good, but it must be practical - the current ones struggle to make for a comfortable relaxed meal (fine for ad-hoc coffee, snacks during the day). Our first table was completely unsuitable with no room for four so we had to wait to pounce on another bigger one. However, that table had chairs too big to fit and so you have to sit straddling the table leg and elbows banging your fellow guests. no visible management, staff looked lost. food took a long time to arrive food didn't arrive at the same time, so one member of the party had finished theirs before I had received mine. pudding (sticky toffee) was over...

Edit…. We came back after the managers last comment and the food was cold, delivered in a very unprofessional way and our server was rude and very neglectful to our needs as customers not once were we asked if we were ok? Was our food ok? (It wasn’t) and then I asked if they were ok as they seemed to have a stink attitude and it was met with a failed attempt at gaslighting. Not good guys this was out favourite place to go together and now I prefer to get a meal deal from boots absolutely shocked at the way this place has gone downhill….

I used to love this place and after being away from the area for six months once back it was always going to be. This time it was very different the staff seemed very bored of their roles and a lot less professional with every aspect of service. We had a drink spilt on our table by the waiter and requested a hand towel to wipe it after it was left, this drink was a cocktail and a large portion of its appeal is in its top which was never replenished. The food was as usual absolutely spot on and still no fault can be thrown on that kitchen they deliver every time. We ordered drinks towards the end of our meal to have as we finished eating and for something to waste 10 minutes with before needing to leave, however these drinks came after 40 minutes making us have to rush them to get going. We could see the staff fooling around at the bar and it just...

Updated review: further to the below Granello made contact with my wife and offered her a voucher to say sorry for the poor experience. We took them up on the offer and I must say it was a far nicer visit for us, so we would visit again. Hopefully this remains a consistent level of service going forward. Thanks to the management for a great complaint resolution approach.

Original review: I have been here and the sister branch culvito (Letchworth) on a few occasions. Generally been a pleasant experience, never mind blowing but ok when out with kids. Yesterday fell well short though. No ice so they couldn’t make a number of drinks and the drinks they did serve were generally not chilled as a result, a number of items weren’t available from the menu, including a number of the kids items which made ordering for our 2 year old more stressful particularly as he’d already picked what he wanted, the service was super slow (it wasn’t busy whatsoever), again not great when out with a toddler as he was climbing the walls by the time the food came. To top it off the baby change facilities were out of order so my wife had to change our sons nappy on the restaurant floor. Staff seemed pretty disengaged and uninterested. It’s certainly put us off using as a go to with the kids and will look around for other...