Italianish — Restaurant in South Tyneside

Very confused by the high ratings here. Overall they put lots effort into making a plate pretty but with no substance. Purple flavourless splodges that add nothing to the flavour (actually made it worse as tasted bad), some green crumb on everything that had no flavour and lots of micro greens around tiny portions. It's like they put loads of effort into the presentation so they can serve small portions of average food and get away with it. Ordered calamari and got 4 rings. The baked aubergine was probably the best but hardly any cheese or tomato so essentially half a baked/steamed aubergine. Then the mains were confusing. I love polenta and Ragu but the plate came with a massive pile of flavourless Ragu and one small ladle of sauce. It was supposed to be a beef and pork Ragu with sausage, but I saw no beef or pork and just a couple of scraps of sausage. The sauce tasted ok but after a few spoonfuls I had non left and just flavourless polenta. The chicken dish my friend got had some tasty chips and that was the highlight (of an Italian restaurant) although he didn't enjoy the chicken as it had a strange texture like it had been pre-cooked and not fresh. Maybe we ordered badly but the poor portion sizes and confusion pointless decoration could not be ignored. The waiter asked if everything was ok with the mains and I pointed out the lack of sauce and masses of polenta and he just smiled and then said nothing to the chef, so nothing was done and they were not bothered.

It was also pretty cold inside which wasn't that pleasant, although I know that's...

So read all the reviews and thought why not let’s try it we ordered 2 fillet steaks 1medium 1 medium rare more On the rare side I was told by a man who works there when I phoned them they did diet lemonade Diet Pepsi max and Pepsi max they only did Pepsi max my girlfriend only drinks diet drinks the service was ok nothing special I had to get a can of sugar free lemonade from a shop so my girlfriend cud drink her vodkas my meal which was the medium steak turned up 10 mins before my girlfriends steak arrived so mine was a lot more cold than hers we got there at 1330 ordered food and my girlfriend still did not have her steak by 14 30 when hers arrived she ate a small piece and we had to leave to go pick her son up from school a at 1515 in Washington hugely disappointed at the lack of diet drinks and the time it took to cook her steak the steak and chips and sauces was very very nice but the time it took to cook 2 different various levels of steak was absolutely appalling my girlfriend had to take her steak home in a doggy bag and could not enjoy it in the restaurant because of the Time it took to Cook her steak I shud have gone back to mambos wine and dine as our food both came out at the same time and was cooked to how we like it and we ate it both at the same time to be a perfect restaurant you need to be precise at everything and sadly today you where not even up to that level the reviews I previously read about the restaurant that’s why i chose to come there but I...

Came here for a meal with my girlfriend as we were interested in the Italian/Spanish mixture of meals. We both ordered from the happy hour menu which had very nice prices.

I ordered the empanadas as a starter and was very impressed. However, I then ordered a Spaghetti Carbonara and my girlfriend a Penne Arrabiata, both of these meals arrived with a bright green finish around the outside of our plates, which at first struck us as strange as the bright colour didn’t not complement the creamy/tomato nature of our meals. It turned out to be Basil oil, this didn’t not go well with the food we had ordered and the very earthy taste took away from the flavour of the meals themselves. It pooled at the bottom of the bowls and ruined the last parts of the meal as the flavour of the oil was very intense. In the correct circumstances I can see this oil working well, but on the incorrect dishes it can ruin the experience. I’d greatly recommend asking if it is on the food before ordering.

As well as this, though the restaurant had a nice interior, the tables were placed very closely together and though it was relatively empty when we arrived, customers were being seated extremely close to one another which wasn’t the most comfortable.

Overall, we did have an adequate experience here but it’s not somewhere that struck us as exceptional.

Overall I’d...