Giovanni's In The Bay — Restaurant in Wales

This was our second time in this restaurant. The atmosphere was nice, the service friendly but rather lacklustre. It was an occasion for us so we splashed out on the fried seafood starter platter which was described as featuring prawns, calamari, and scallops with bread and olives. Mmm... I love scallops, they are my favourite! However, when it arrived there wasn't a scallop in sight. We were served a plate of prawns... calamari... and ... little fried pieces of salmon? I asked a staff member what happened to the scallops and they went to the kitchen to ask and then came back and told us with a casual shrug that the chef didn't have any, so he gave us salmon instead. Oh, that's OK then? No information was given on missing items at the time we ordered, no further discussion was offered, no offer of an alternative option than salmon, no offer of any remedy/discount, no nothing. Given that this starter is £26.50 it would be nice to know that what you order is not fully what you will get BEFORE you order it. This is not a supermarket delivery, you can't just substitute scallops for salmon and hope people don't notice or care. When a different staff member collected our plate and asked if we enjoyed I told them it was tasty but I would have liked the scallops as per the menu and the reply was "I know, I don't know why they do that" as though it happens a lot and is an OK thing to do and there was nothing they could possibly do about it. I do wonder if the scallops are absent from this dish on a regular basis and are replaced by (cheaper) fried salmon bits...

Don't get me wrong, the calamari and prawns were very tasty, we were hungry and we ate the salmon though it's not what we preferred. Was it a £26.50 starter? No way, but our pizza to follow was tasty. I'm not complaining about the taste of the food. But what you get is not worth the high price. It's normal to find that prices have shot up everywhere you go these days, but £27 for a bottle of the average house red which is shown as £21.95 at the menu of their sister restaurants (and also on the online menu for this restaurant) is beyond ridiculous! Not a single bottle of red on the Bay menu for less than £24.95.  Don't tell me you can't find a decent Italian red for a reasonable price out there. It was a £17ish bottle at most and that's just what we think the restaurant price mark should be, not the actual cost to the restaurant which we all know is much much much lower.

So all in all, stop taking the mickey. We would return...

Overpriced. We expected better for the price. We had 2 starters, 2 mains, 2 beers, and 2 ciders, which came tojust shy of £100.

Starters; I had the mussels. The white wine sauce is lovely, but a lot of the mussels hadn't opened properly. My wife had meatballs, she enjoyed them but nothing special.

Mains; I had the linguine carbonara and my wife had risotto. Portion sizes are bonkers, double what they should be. They both lacked in flavour, the linguine was plain, no flavour at all, and the sauce in the bottom was just watery. Sorry guys, but I have had better from a tesco microwave meal. The risotto was okay, nothing she couldn't have made herself at home for a fraction of the price. Neither of us finished our meals, both leaving more than half.

Atmosphere; The location is nice, great view out the window. The owner gives off an impression that he really likes people to know who he is, which is a bit off putting. There was a Big flashy Range Rover parked (illegally) out the front, and he has hundreds of photos of himself with celebs around the room. I am confident that Gino Decampo (in one of the photos) would not be happy being served the same carbonara that they gave me. There is even a TV playing with his own cooking show and adverts, his face is literally EVERYWHERE! It's a little annoying.

As it was a bank holiday weekend, we expected it to be busy, but it was dead, maybe 2 other people. The staff were friendly, and the place had lots of features like boardgames, interesting books, and a lot of the details for the place are well thought out, the only thing this place is missing is good food! I would say that they need to figure out what kind of restaurant it is though, it's doing too much. Boardgames are for casual cafes, nobody is going to pay those prices to play board games!

We left disappointed, and we won't eat...

I never leave negative reviews but yesterday’s experience in this restaurant has forced me to do so, so others don’t experience the same! Our table was booked for 5.30 - a hen party of 21. We had been asked to pre order which we did. We finally had our food at 7.45 which meant we missed our booking at the next venue. Waiting over two hours after pre booking was ridiculous- what was the point? Portion sizes were crazy with one guest only actually having 4 mushrooms slices on her starter! We sent this back . After complaining about the wait, Bleddyn, the manager, who had been so accommodating before our visit did try to make things better by giving the party prosecco and taking money off the bill (service charge in the first instance) but unfortunately the evening had already been ruined waiting over two hours before even a starter was served is unacceptable. ( 2 hours 29 minutes!) The food itself was quite tasty when it eventually arrived, as expected, having been to giovannis in town several times, however, the service was awful! Bleddyn, whilst trying to make things better also seemed overly concerned about the bad reviews the place would receive from our party stating ‘well I don’t feel there’s anything I can do to make this better we are going to get bad reviews now anyway!’ Maybe visiting in the day in a small group would be a better experience but I would 100% avoid in large groups at busy times, they don’t seem to have the capacity to cope even after insisting on a pre order? There are so many restaurants down the bay to choose from, gutted we chose this one for my daughters Hen! Real shame as the location...