Giovanni's in Park Place — Restaurant in Wales

What on earth has happened to Giovannis???? Once an iconic restaurant in Cardiff but a shadow of its former self.

Starters were luke warm, a mini portion at best and lacking in any sort of taste. I gave the benefit of the doubt but then the mains came out.

I Ordered the Beef Ragu expecting big chunks of beef at £20 a portion but it was anything but, it looked like something served up in a prison canteen. Minced lamb (I think) not sure it had no taste). Absolutely awful, bland food that you would not be happy paying £5 with at a food stall let alone anything more.

My partner had the lasagne and it was more of the same, heated up to a temperature that made it impossible to eat for 15 minutes and the flavour had been zapped out of it by that point. That tends to happen if you nuke something before bringing it out.

The fact the meals were with us within 5-10 minutes should have been a warning sign to us.

The waiters were pleasant enough but it is a very salesman like approach that pounced on you at all points - encouraging to have a beer or prosecco (we do not drink), encouraging to have garlic bread, encouraging to have dessert. It is over the top !!!!

Giovannis used to be a great Cardiff institution but I will not be visiting again as this is my second bad experience in as...

No problems with staff. The calamari starter was the worst calamari I’ve ever had, and it's my go to a mediterranean starter, so i've eaten a lot in my time. It was very rubbery. Under or overcooked.

Then came the pheasant ragu. On the regular menu: "Slow-cooked pheasant ragu with a rich tomato base, served on rigatoni." On the Christmas menu: "Slow-cooked pheasant ragu served with rigatoni pasta." Notice the omission of the "rich tomato base"? Yeah, that’s because there was none. For the price of these dishes, you’d expect a decent pasta like pappardelle, tagliatelle, or fettuccine. And, I’d also expect a bowl, not a wide plate with what looked like a pool of stock like slop.

Dessert? Oh god, not again. I’m not a huge fan of tiramisu, so I was the only one to have the cheesecake. It was creamy, yes, but not cheesy at all. The strawberries? Nope. Instead, it came drenched in ice cream van-style strawberry sauce and some other unidentifiable white sauce. Just sugar piled on sugar doesn’t make a good dessert.

In the end, both Giovanni’s locations were an immense disappointment. The food was overpriced and lackluster. An insultingly overpriced scam, dressed up in a tricolore and plastered with Mr.Giovanni's face at every turn. Avoid...

Arrived in time for our 7pm booking, and waited a couple of minutes to be seated. Staff were friendly and helpful at first, and starters arrived in a reasonable time. When we still hadn't received our main courses by 8.20 we wondered if we had perhaps been forgotten, but it took another half an hour to even get the attention of any staff. The Boss had been visiting most of the tables, but didn't venture across to our side of the room and promptly retired to the kitchen with a nice glass of something. We finally asked a waitress if they had forgotten our main courses, so which we received an emphatic 'no'. I think it was nearly 9pm at this point. The restaurant was by no means full so it wasn't a case of them being too busy. Cue rather a lot of frantic activity and finger pointing in our direction (rather awkward) , and our main courses duly arrived. Lasagne with virtually no pasta in, not ideal for the two athletes wanting pasta pre Half Marathon the following morning. Pizza was undercooked. We finally left at 9.50pm, with no actual apology, and certainly no inclination to ever darken their door again. Such a shame, but recommended to us by someone who owns a business in the centre of town; we'll be feeding back our...