Sardinia — Restaurant in Thanet

Here’s my review of Sardinia from today’s lunch thanks to the team for making our day out special.

Well having been to a few other restaurants in Broadstairs as it’s my friends favourite place, I looked on TripAdvisor and booked based on the excellent reviews. I was not disappointed. I booked for 12:15 but having walked round the town and had the cobwebs blown from us by the very strong wind that was blowing we arrived at 12pm. The front doors were already open and the staff were tucking into Penne with tomatoes and basil, garnished with Parmesan. Always a good sign if the staff are eating Italian food in an Italian Restaurant. I apologised for my early arrival, and was shown to a table by the window overlooking the sea, with a lovely warm breeze coming in. My friends sat and relaxed after our walk. We were then approached by a waitress who promptly took our drinks orders and disappeared. The drinks arrived promptly and we noted that the once empty restaurant was rapidly filling up! A good sign, for drinks we ordered a house red which was a very quaffable Montepulciano (the village I used to be a tour guide in during the 1980’s) it is a medieval hilltop town in Tuscany, Italy. Surrounded by vineyards, it’s known for its vino nobile red wine. The Torre di Pulcinella is a clock tower topped by a figure of the Pulcinella, a commedia dell’arte character. On the Piazza Grande is the 14th-century Palazzo Comunale, with a tower offering views of the surrounding countryside. Also there is the Duomo, with a huge triptych above its altar. It’s a lovely fruity red, perfect with pasta and pizza, I ordered a pepperoni pizza, but for starter’s I chose the Caprese Tricoloure mozzarella and tomato sprinkled with Balsamic and basil, Kate had deep fried Mozzarella in breadcrumbs with light salad, and Ann had a bowl of olives. Once we all had a glass of the Montepulchiano, the starters arrived and we interrogated the staff as to where they were from. One stand-out friendly waiter was born in Albania, but brought up in Greece, he was charming and fun, really made us laugh. The starters were lovely, we had a carafe of iced tap water too as I was driving I could only have a small glass of wine! Then our mains arrived even with a now full restaurant everyone was happy and laughing a great atmosphere. Ann ordered a linguini with king prawns and clams, Kate ordered spaghetti carbonara, which she doused in Parmesan cheese and black pepper. As you’ll see from my photos the food was fresh, the tastes were excellent too and with two bottles of house red we only paid just under £100 for all three including tips. If you’re not sure where to go this is a great option in...

The food was absolutely amazing, but the service did not go as well. There had been an issue with our reservation, even though we had received the confirmation from the reservation app, for some reason they had not received it/signed it down on their little book. Understanding that issues may happen we are very happy to wait, as it is a bank holiday weekend and we understand that they are very busy, we wait around half an hour, we have a joke with the bartender and everything is fine. Once seated one of the waitresses comes to get our order, we are asked to order all together, entrees and mains, which again is ok, we had plenty of time while waiting to decide on our order. Food arrives before the drinks, which is a bit unusual, but we have seen how busy the bar is so no biggie really, once we receive our entrees I ask if I could order the bread basket, and apologies for not adding it to our main order, I'm told a bit roughly from a new waiter that it will take at the very least 5 minutes, and I say that is not an issue, as I mainly would like it for my main. After 15 mins ca I enquire to the nicer waitress if my bread is coming, she goes and askes the less nice guy. He comes to the table and in a very rough way says "you wanted it with the main". Which is an understandable misunderstanding but there is no need to to be rude about it. I say "Oh sorry I said mainly with my main, but happy to wait". Mains arrive and nowhere is my bread, I'm one of those Italians that really need their bread on the table to enjoy the meal, so I just keep waiting. Once my partner finishes his meal I ask again for my bread, at which point the nicer waitress just rudely says "so what you are not going to eat without the bread" and I'm quite annoyed by now and say "no". I believe they were trying to wrap up to finish for the day, but is really not my fault we had to wait so late for a table! We reserved for 8.30 because they said on their website that that was their preference, we arrived on time and tried to be polite about everything. As I Sardinian woman living abroad for quite some time now, I was particularly excited to try this restaurant, and tried to keep positive through out, but they managed to really ruin my experience, not even the lovely Sardinian touches (san Giorgio water, Ichnusa and Sardinian Vermentino) can help forget how uselessly rude the waiting staff was. If you can get take away, but I would not recommend visiting...

Poor quality service and mediocre food We waited for 30 minutes before our drinks orders were taken and this only happened because a member of our party flagged down the waitress and asked. She audibly groaned and said yeah two seconds. We were admittedly for some of this time waiting for another member of the party to arrive but surely this is the time to offer olives and dough balls as well as get the first drinks orders taken. The same happened shortly after when we asked if we could place our food orders. It was as if everything we asked was an inconvenience. Once the food arrived no one checked back to see if we were ok, the food was ok etc. Again we had to flag down staff and ask for more drinks, one of which never arrived and was on the bill. After paying £110 deposit we noticed it hasn't been taken off the bill. After speaking to the one welcoming staff member working he took off both of those things. Serving staff were rude, uninterested in us and unwelcoming, got both food and drinks orders wrong and we still had to pay £30 gratuity which none of us felt was warranted. We could have over looked poor service if the food was outstanding however it was simply ok, nothing particularly to write home about, and certainly not worth the price. The cocktails were the saving grace to this restaurant, and we would have ordered more had the staff wanted to take our orders. Will not recommend this place to friends and definitely...