Cancello Bar & Restaurant — Restaurant in St Helens

When we first arrived we could see how busy and stressful the restaurant was due to it being full. This was because they had big parties and a bottomless brunch offer on. We had to wait for around 15-20 minutes for the table to be ready which was not an issue as we just got a drink at the bar. We were shown to our table and after 5-10 minutes the waiter arrived to take our order, we cannot fault the waiter he was amazing and interacted with the little one we had at the table.

The starters arrived and one of our party had ordered mussels in the tomato sauce and he wasn't keen as they tasted sandy/gritty. We told the waiter and the reply we got was do you want some bread to mop the tomato sauce that was left. Then the mains came out and all looked good, we ordered penne arribatta, the salmon pasta, spaghetti Bolognese and 2 pizzas. Not the best flavours to be honest but it's an ok Italian not really traditional. Whilst eating the penne as I got the the bottom of the dish I noticed a strand of spaghetti pasta in my penne pasta! At the same time one of our party noticed there was a few chunks of mince meat in her salmon pasta!! We brought this to the attention of the staff immediately and the waitress took it to the kitchen and came back out with the dish and told us the chef had told her that this was a grey piece of salmon, the most pathetic thing I have ever heard. We know the difference between salmon and MINCE MEAT. I then pointed out the fact that in the penne we had found the spaghetti to be told "well we are busy tonight"!! Not good enough. I don't want to make assumptions but its like the chef or whoever plated our food was using the same utensils as the spaghetti Bolognese seemed to be part of both the additional pasta dishes. Luckily the person eating the salmon was not a vegetarian or the situation would have been a whole lot worse for this establishment. The cross contamination was obvious to even the wait staff that saw our dishes. It was even pointed out to us that the spag bol had linguine pasta as well as spaghetti pasta which wasn't noticed by us so I think this speaks volumes to the cross contamination. I understand it was busy and we were very patient about this but when it comes to the food it's a big issue as one of our party had literally 2 mouthfuls of pasta before finding the mincemeat so left the restaurant having not eaten anything but olives. Again I want to make a point and say the staff were extremely busy when we arrived and this is if no fault of the front of house staff. I think this restaurant needs to rethink the booking system and the bottomless brunch or maybe even warn customers because had we know it was bottomless brunch we would have chose a...

When it was Ariete it was great, but just tried this for last night's Valentines on a special menu were you recieve "a glass of house fizz", and they just didn't understand their own promotion. We told 2 different waiting staff that we were using the "Valentines set menu" so our 1st drink would be the glass of house fizz then we said we would order a bottle of the pink prosecco (£32 a bottle) with our meal, so they decided to go straight to opening and leaving us with a bottle of plain house prosecco. We managed to actually finish the bottle before anyone decided to ask for our food order. At this point the table next to us had been cleared of the last customers / table reset / next booking couple seated (with their glass of fizz) / bottle of wine ordered n arrived / food order taken, all after we where seated. We changed our mind about eating n went directly to pay for the bottle we drank. When asked at the till why we weren't eating, we aired what had occurred and the fact it took 30mins for anyone to think about taking our food order. The place had so many extra tables in aswell it was like a school dinner hall. We were given the bottle free of charge after hearing our complaint from the host and offered one of the promotional set menu for the night for free, however we left as the moment had passed and instead we managed to get in at the lovely Indian restaurant "The Amans" who made us feel like royalty and the food n drink n atmosphere was amazing. On booking, I replied 3 times to their promotional email with no responses (I've used this with success when it was Ariete...?!?!) Then phoned and couldn't get the time I wanted in my email. We always go for me and my husbands birthday and usually include an expensive bottle of champagne with our meal so we usually end up spending £150-200 just on us 2 as we don't mind spending out and appreciate good food / drink / atmosphere but unfortunately we will not be back. Whilst we appreciate the odd mistake can occur in such a busy industry, this was just error after error after error,...

Booked for a works party 3 months ago only six of us ☹️ sent in our pre booked menus basically 2 lamb mains and 4 turkey dinners plus starters n sweets £34 95 per head started well taken promptly to our table at 7.30 drinks ordered and starters served ( lovely food) ordered more drinks and waited and waited asked a few times where was mains then they started bringing dessert ?? Maitre'd arrived offered us a bottle of wine for our wait and an explanation that they were busy as lots of people just before us had ordered steaks well done or medium hence the delay !!! - to be fair declined the wine as no one in our party was drinking wine and a complimentary round of drinks was provided - 9 :15 harrah mains appeared couple had no pigs in blankets or stuffing but that was soon rectified - the food was lovely and deserved 5 stars 🌟 long wait for the table to be cleared by which time we had little time to eat our deserts as we had a pre booked mini bus again cannot fault them for the discount for the deserts which we were unable to wait for - all in all lovely food lovely surroundings although the tables were packed in Like sardines and I must say our waiter a total star of a young man who sorry we did not get his name who is a credit to you could not do enough for us or apologize enough - would I go back yes but not at Christmas as I feel they had taken too many bookings could NOT fault the food. The photo is my half eaten main as I was that hungry I forgot to take a...