Rinaldis Restaurant Ltd — Restaurant in Wakefield

We visited this restaurant after reading the reviews and it made us question what people consider good italian food or good food in general. First of all the atmosphere in the restaurant is more of a tavern, which means very loud and not intimate at all. Not necessarily a negative, just a pointer of what to expect. As for the food... well it's hard to have to say that the only things that were good were the wine and the water we were served. The focaccia is not a focaccia. It is just pizza dough with toppings. Even the waitress that brought it out to us called it a garlic bread, which told us that they just use the same base for everything. Could be a pizza, could be a focaccia, could be a garlic bread... it's all the same. The toppings are not great either (when the menu says tomato you don't expect tomato sauce). The rolls of smoked salmon wrapped around shrimps is generally nice, but the salmon just overpowers the shrimp flavour-which makes them irrelevant- and it comes with a thousand island sauce that covers everything. Plus I believe it should come presliced from the kitchen, as it just falls apart when you do it at the table. The short ribs, which are supposed to be a speciality of the restaurant, come in a good size and the sauce is tasty, albeit on the sweet side, but the ribs themselves are very tough to chew. For mains we selected two pasta dishes. My tagliatelle con filleto didn't have much flavour to offer. My wife's linguine mare e monti was totally ruined by the puddle of oil it came in. Even a mocktail that we tried only had the artificial flavour of a syrup. The service was quick and attentive, which was one of the few good things. Though, I would like to point out to many of the female staff that the glass screen behind which they set up their trays does not make them invisible. So people can actually see them constantly pointing, gossiping and commenting on their customers, while giggling about whatever they find amusing. Not a good image and not a way to make people feel welcome. Parking was easy, so...

We (family of 4) visited Rinaldis on Saturday hoping to have a lovely meal together. When we entered at 7:20pm, we requested a table. We were told the wait time would be an hour or less- that was fine, we didn’t mind waiting that long. Over an hour or so, we saw many people getting seated. After about 1.5 hours of waiting, we approached the lady at the desk to ask how much longer we were expected to wait. To this she replied saying there were only 2 more groups of 4 to be seated, and then we were next. We thought ‘ok that’s perfectly understandable’ and decided to wait a little while longer. During this wait, we noticed several groups of 4 getting seated before us. People who had entered the restaurant after us had been seated, eaten their meals and left, yet we were still stood around waiting. We were becoming increasingly hungry and annoyed. At this point, we had been waiting well over 2 hours. We approached the lady at the desk, and once again she repeated the same excuse of there being 2 groups of 4 to be seated before us. Now it was clear that they had just been making a fool of us, allowing us to stand around and not giving us a table, despite us waiting for so long. We approached the manager/owner and complained about the slow service. His response was that there was nothing he could do about it. He spoke to us in a very patronising and demeaning way and it upset us a lot. We are people of colour and he spoke to us as if we couldn’t understand English; it was very insulting. The rudeness of this exchange was so evident that other customers noticed this and came to comfort us, advising us to go to a nearby restaurant. It was only when we put our coats on, ready to leave, that he came and offered us a table. This was around 9:45pm. The food itself was lovely, can’t complain about that. Such a shame that the management lets this...

We went as a family of 8 - 5 adults 3 children for my daughters 2nd birthday. The food was absolutely beautiful! It's such a shame to be greeted at the door by the most patronising manager I've met in my life. So rude! As we walked in we were made aware that we weren't allowed the birthday cake to be on the table due to restaurant policy which is disappointing, but understandable. A waiter came to take our order but the manager rushed over and told him that's not for him to do and left the lad looking embarrassed. He then took our orders - we weren't waiting long until our food came and again not a bad word to say, really good quality food. Our daughter, baring in mind yes, she's two and hadn't napped started to cry. Clearly not happy he asked why she was crying. Which we replied "because she's 2 and not napped today she will settle down in a moment." It was like a type of cry that doesn't disturb people, it was more a moaning, bottom lip out type. We asked another member of staff if we could possibly take the cake out and light the candles just so she could blow them out infront of the family. The colleague asked the manager and I tracked him with my eyes and the look of disgust on the managers face was so off putting. He came back and told us the unfortunate news and apologised. He looked frightend to ask the question, nobody should be made to feel like that. We also asked if we could split the bill 3 ways when ordering because it was 3 separate bills orders and it would make it easier for everyone paying. The manager replied "No we don't do that, you can pay 3 separate way at the till it's not hard to work out." Due to the experience of him ruining the meal of our daughters 2nd birthday we won't be returning which is such a shame because the food really...