Nettuno — Restaurant in Long Beach

I’ve visited Nettuno several times for dinner and have always enjoyed the ambience, especially with the new Breakers Fairmont Hotel being such a standout addition to Long Beach. So, when my family and I decided to celebrate my niece’s 50th birthday, we thought a Sunday brunch at Nettuno would be a perfect choice.

However, the experience was extremely disappointing due to the restaurant’s reservation system (or lack thereof). I initially tried to book an online reservation for our party of twelve, but because the group size was too large, I was directed to call the restaurant directly. This is where the issues began.

My cousin called twice and left a voicemail, and I also left several voicemails with no response. On my third attempt, I finally spoke with a young lady who assured me she would reach out to Ms Washington, the sales manager, to help us with the booking. She told me that Ms Washington was at her desk and would be in touch soon. Unfortunately, I never received a return call—no follow-up, no update, not even a courtesy call to let me know that our party couldn’t be accommodated.

To make matters worse, today my cousin called again, only to be told the same thing: the only person who could help with reservations for larger parties was Ms Washington. The restaurant is understaffed in handling larger bookings. The hotel should consider hiring additional help to manage the volume of reservation inquiries, especially for parties of six or more.

After six failed attempts, we finally gave up and made a reservation at another local restaurant. It is not very pleasant because I was really looking forward to sharing this new gem in the city with my family. Instead, my efforts were met with nothing but frustration.

Nettuno, I hope you take this feedback seriously and make some changes to improve your reservation process. Unfortunately, what should have been a special occasion turned into a complete...

Room for improvement. The star here is the food! Everything was top notch.

We started with the brunch board, which had a great selection of meats, olives, and focaccia. The deviled eggs were a nice touch. Standard sort of fair, but executed very well.

I had the eggs in purgatory, which seemed to be an Italian version of shakshuka. Well balanced with the eggs and a little heat from the Calabrian chili.

The Lemon Ricotta Pancakes were declared "the best pancakes I've ever had," which is saying something! Great textures and the lemon flavor delicate and not overpowering.

Lobster Benedict had ample lobster, great flavors and a brilliant sauce.

And the breakfast potatoes were crispy on the outside and amazingly fluffy inside. For a simple potato, they were cooked to perfection.

Service on the other hand was very inconsistent. Up till we ordered, we felt very well looked after. Then we didn't see our server again for nearly the entire meal. They forgot my potatoes and no one checked to see how we were doing, so we had to chase down someone to help us...who turned out to be the manager. My water glass remained empty nearly the entire meal (I was Designated Driver, so that was all I was drinking). And while their cocktail selection was great and tasty, they missed out on at least one more round by just not checking on us.

And, we were celebrating a birthday, so special occasions don't seem to really matter to them.

Food, of course, is the main reason to go to a restaurant and they nailed it. And service is extremely important also and this was a miss. Glad I went this one time.

One-and-done. Would...

As I will be staying at the hotel in December I wanted to go trial the restaurant. After valeting my vehicle, I checked in with my reservation and was told it would be a 10 minute wait which was the first sign something was wrong. The check-in host was also cleaning and setting the tables. When we finally sat we had a friendly server but unfortunately that’s where it all went downhill. Apparently the kitchen staff was mixing up tickets for in room dining and the restaurant and the food took a very very long time to come out. My latte was not good, but I drank it. My poor server gave us comp juice, comp coffee refills, bread with jam and butter, to tide us over. Unfortunately our dishes were not fully clean and had food on them. The whole restaurant was understaffed and I felt so bad. When our food finally arrived, it was awful. No better than iHop quality for double the price. I barely ate any of it - the French toast was not crispy and lacked flavor. Our duck egg has barely had duck and the hash nuggets looked like they were from frozen - not even fresh cooked potatoes. I absolutely would never eat here again. Overall it gave me a poor impression of the hotel as there were other issues aside from the restaurant (10+ minute valet wait - also...