La Tabella — Restaurant in Sefton

It was a very good small Italian restaurant in Southport / Churchtown with 5-star food and service in the last 5 years but it has changed today. We are kind of loyal customers to the restaurant, and we always recommended many friends to try this restaurant in the past 5 years when they visited Southport. We went there almost once every two months.... but regret to say that it was no longer in my restaurant list any more after today.

Today, we brought 16 people, a mix of 9 adults (men & women) and 7 young people (boys and girls and some of them are under 18) to there for a lunch. Though we finally ordered 12 set lunch (starter and lunch at £18 each) + one extra main course plus some snacks and drinks today, the restaurant may wrongly counted the number of lunch sets and had charged us 2 set lunche more. While we came back tonight around 2100 to ask for a refund of the two over-charged lunch sets, the restaurant owner and his staff first denied that it has an over-charged situation and insisted the bill was correct. While we showed our group photos to prove what we had ordered, he then said our lunch order was too little for 16 people, the pictures were not taken at the beginning of the lunch, and we should not share food within the restaurant. If we did so, the restaurant would do its business in loss, and baabaabaa..... finally, with our insist, he was somehow reluctant to refund us £40 from his cashier machine.

Understand that he wanted to protect his business from loss, but I'm quite disappointing about his response tonight. First, we are his loyal customers in years, and only asked for a refund the first time due to the overcharge situation. Second, during lunch time, it only had another 3-4 customers there. Without us (we paid more than £320 to yhe restaurant. If not, it may only get a max of £100 from them during lunch time. Third, as we all may know, a restaurant's profit margin is not mainly coming from meals but from drinks ordered by its customers. Drinks, also desserts, have very high profit margin to a restaurant comparing to that of main course. Fourth, its food quality was not as good as before, especially in our last two patronages (two weeks ago and today). Fifth, an over-bill case and not order enough main course per person are two separate issues. He should not mix these two issues up. Finally, if the boss knows how to deal with his loyal customers better and more skillful, it would not lose some loyal customers like us.

My suggestions to the restaurant and the owner are ... 1) may state clearly in the restaurant that it has a minimum charge to each individual customer, or each customer should order a main course over there during lunch time. 2) to ensure food quality of the restaurant to be consistent over time, 3) if he wants to operate a more profitable business, he should improve his customer handling and communication skill. Customers may not always right but he should handle different...

Phenomenal Italian restaurant. We were wandering around Churchtown (such a picturesque place) and decided to stop for lunch. All sorts of reasonably priced lunch deals (2 pizzas and bottle of wine for £25 or choice of pizza or pasta and drink for £12.50). The waitresses couldn’t have been more welcoming. We sat inside but there are also options to sit outside or upstairs. Garlic bread starter was delicious, perfect thin crust generously brushed with garlic butter. Rocket and parmesan salad was dressed with balsamic, very refreshing. Mushroom cream pasta with crispy sage leaves was generous and had a great depth of flavor. Parma ham and mushroom pizza had a great crust. We didn’t have room for dessert. Waitress was so friendly yet professional and offered freshly grated parmesan and fresh ground pepper. Toilets were immaculate....

After a pleasant lunch at La Tabella with good service I experienced a serious bout of food poisoning.

I called the owner Robert the morning after and he was professional and said he would investigate with the team.

After 10 days and no response I made a followed up call to the manager. It's been more than two weeks but still no call back.

When no one can be 100% sure of the cause looking back the pasta dish I had was warm but not piping hot as my previous visits. The symptoms eased after 24 hours but my main concern is La Tabella didn't have a courtesy to call me back.

I have eaten here many many times over the years and on my call wasn't looking for compensation but concerned for other customers if la Tabella had a bad batch of food.

Anyway the poor customer experience means my family and I will not eat...