Tony Macaroni - Livingston — Restaurant in Scotland

We booked a table for 3 adults and 2 kids on a Friday afternoon.

We were seated quickly and given 2 sets of menus, no explanation that they were different, but we figured it out when we started mentioning things that weren't on one of them!

The drinks order was taken, and shortly after, the food. The girl who took the order and the guy who brought the drinks were very nice.

When the food came, it appeared the server was training someone else, which was a bit concerning as his service was terrible. He gave us the food, then just walked off as we asked for another drink for the kids. When the last dish came out, he did the same. No mention of, can I get you anything else. We finally got his attention and told him what we wanted.

We were looking for parmesan for the pasta and sauce for the chips, but nothing was offered, so we ended up going to get it ourselves.

The food itself was not great. The lasagne and risotto were very bland. The kids' pizza and chicken dish were OK, and the garlic pizza bread with pesto and mozzarella was really nice.

We waited for the drinks to arrive for some time, but as we were almost finished with our meals, we decided to walk up to find someone. The two guys were standing at the till chatting and just walked away as I came up. I ended up finding the girl who served us first and asked her about the drinks. They hadn't been ordered. She went to the till and ordered them for us and they finally arrived as we were done eating.

Overall, it was not a great experience. I haven't been here for years as it was very poor the last time, too. Don't think I'll bother...

I have one reason for a lack of a 5th star in this review, which I will come onto soon. Firstly, the positives:

-Excellent pricing. Easily the highest value for money restaurant in livingston -Comfortable seating -Appropriately social distanced -Great food, cannot emphasise enough how good the food is for your money

The negative:

Lets have a look at 'Optional service charge' - notice the word 'Optional.' I presume, the people reading this, are aware of the definition of optional.

This service charge goes towards the entirety of the team at tony macaroni's livingston, which is great as it gives everyone an equal opportunity to earn some extra money for their services.

However - it appears the staff are not aware of the term 'optional' and automatically charge this 5% tip. I simply did not care enough to ask for a small charge of money back (rather embarrassing) - as I am perfectly happy to give a 5% tip. However, I am not perfectly happy to be unknowingly charged this fee - in other words, I was not asked.

It is something so simple any of us could ask such a question. So it appears the staff and/or the manager are enjoying robbing people of their hard earned money blindly.

Such a simple fix to avoid this. Just ask. Every time.

To conclude, Do I reccomend this restaurant? Yes. Of course. The positives heavily outweigh the negative. I just thought some feedback on the service fee was needed as another reviewer complained about the same issue and the response from the owner was...

Only my 2nd time visiting a tony macaroni and very much the same both times. Quite disappointing.

The first waiter was great, brought crayons over for the kids and offered some blank paper to draw on.

They have no physical kids menus, but we can scan a qr code to view them on our phones. The grandparents would not be impressed by this.

The table was very loose and moved a lot.

The combination of the background noise and the waitress whispering made me order completely the wrong thing (which was nice), but not what I wanted.

We ordered from the Sunday menu (which was given to us) but had to query the bill at the end as they weren’t the Sunday prices. Which was then disputed, so I had to show the waitress the items on the Sunday menu.

The 10% service charge which is forced on you is comical, they state that their team work really hard. If you think they work so hard, why don’t you pay them more? I work really hard in my job, but my customers aren’t forced to add extra to their bill. The look of disgust on the waitresses face when I asked for it to be removed was impressive! She then didn’t come back or speak to us after the card machine was practically jabbed into my face! We would have probably left a small tip ourselves had the idea not be forced upon us.

The quality of the food is very average. The prices aren’t high so can’t moan at that.

I can’t see myself every going back, and I am really not surprised they are closing so many of their...