Osteria Da Gino — Restaurant in Stratford-on-Avon

We were craving authentic Italian and found this lovely little corner restaurant slightly off the beaten path but still very walkable from out hotel. We arrived slightly after opening time for dinner service, around 5:30 pm, and were greeted cheerfully, and were offered a cozy little corner table right away. Throughout our meal, multiple servers stopped at our table ensuring we had everything we needed. The menu features many dishes including pizza. We each had a side green salad as a starter, which was a generous healthy portion of refreshingly delicious fresh greens tossed with a generous amount of excellent Mediterranean style olives, onions and tomato ( the olives were a pleasant surprise!). They served two pieces off freshly baked herbed focaccia along with the salads. We also ordered the Da Gino pizza and it is a light thin crust pizza with shavings of prosciutto, arugula (rocket), and Parmesan. There was a gleaming copper-colored wood fired pizza oven visible from the dining room, with dough proofing in stacked wooden bowls on a shelf beside it. We could watch the chef working the oven. The crust is made with imported Neapolitan flour, which I was curious about, and I could definitively taste the difference with its soft pillowy texture, yet crisp and not too chewy, creating a delightful pizza. We also ordered Pollo alla Calabrese, which the chicken and sausage were cooked to perfection, generously covered with a delicately spicy sauce of puréed red pepper/tomato. Although my husband thought the dish to be overly saucy, I appreciated the fact that it was a healthy vegetable puree rather than a cream sauce, so together we enjoyed this bit of nutrition in a sauce by dipping in bits of pizza crust, and it...

What started as a promising evening turned into one of the worst dining experiences I’ve ever had.

The mains took 1.5 hours to arrive, and only after we voiced our frustration did our waiter—who was polite and apologetic—explain that there had been a technical issue with orders not reaching the kitchen. She kindly said she would speak to the manager. Unfortunately, this is where the experience fell apart.

The manager could not have been more dismissive or unprofessional. She offered no apology, simply repeating that we “still had to pay.” We had never asked not to pay, but rather raised awareness that leaving guests waiting for such a long time without any communication is unacceptable.

When I tried to explain this in good faith, the manager was rude and literally put her hand in my face to silence me, saying she was too busy. When I requested the bill, she snapped that I should not tell her how to run her restaurant. When I asked to speak to her superior, she lied, saying he was not present—despite the fact that I knew he was one of the chefs.

This kind of bullying behaviour, carried out in front of both diners and staff, is deeply concerning. No restaurant should be able to operate under such unethical standards.

I won’t even begin to comment on the food. Please do not be fooled by the professional pictures posted here (likely by the restaurant itself). Trust instead the detailed reviews below that highlight similar complaints about rude, dismissive management.

Avoid at all costs—this is not hospitality,...

Over 1 hour wait time for inedible main courses that we sent back including chewy chicken that turned my stomach and a ‘steak’ that had the consistency of an old leather boot. Followed by hostile abuse and attitude from a ‘waitress/ manager’? arguing the food and by now 90 minute experience were good and acceptible. As she berated my family members I watched and wondered how long her aggressive pointing of fingers and hands in our faces while spewing her rudeness will last during these societal times? We are an older generation but it seems she is just one younger socially clued up person away from a harassment charge.

Anyway if that’s your idea of a good night out then this is the place for you! We chose it based on the 5 star reviews and could not imagine how it was so incredibly the opposite of them? Now looking back at the reviews I see there is an avalanche of good ones with perfect pictures of food ( none of it looked like that when we were there) right after a series of bad reviews similar to mine mentioning ‘tough old meat’ and ‘rude service’. It’s very easy for an establishment to bury the bad reviews by writing their own or telling friends to and while we don’t know if that’s what happened here I do know that our experience matched all the bad ones exactly.

So if you’re rolling the dice on reviews hoping for a good night out I’d say go with the bad ones on this place. It’s not worth the risk of getting the awful experience we did. They still charged us for one of the mains AND the old...