Pizzeria Napoletana

My wife and I went for a romantic night out this Friday, having spent Valentine's day travelling from abroad on a business trip. We phoned to reserve a table earlier in the day for the Pizzeria Napoletana in Knowle. We had not been before, and decided to order a bottle of wine, a starter and a pizza each. The staff were very friendly, although it took around an hour for the starter to arrive. We ordered a meat pizza each; one was a pepperoni pizza, the other the restaurant's special, including two types of meat and vegetables. When they arrived neither had any meat on them, and we returned them straight away. The same pizzas were returned to us, the pepperoni pizza with four small pieces of pepperoni thrown on top plus additional soggy peppers, and the other with meat but very dry. We were both very disappointed with our pizzas and felt that they were not at all of a reasonable standard. One of the waiters asked us how we were enjoying our meal, and we very politely explained that we were not happy. He looked at our food and immediately agreed that we had good reason for complaint. He asked what we would like him to do and we suggested that he speak to the Manager so that we could reach an agreement on the bill and leave the restaurant. The Manager brought out the chef to ask how many slices of pepperoni he had put on the pizza, which we found embarrassing as the whole restaurant was watching. He approached us in a very aggressive manner, demanding that we pay for everything minus one pizza saying "how much pepperoni would you like on your pizza, 22 slices?" to which I answered "that would be nice". The Manager then demanded "is this not the best pizza you have had?" to which I shook my head. He then picked up the plate with my pizza on it and slammed it back down on the table. He then walked out of the restaurant after being encouraged to leave by his staff. We then talked to the staff who stated that we should walk out before he came back as they felt it was wrong for us to pay.

Should we really put up with service like this in our own village? Neither of us have ever been treated like this by anyone before in our lives. We went to a local pub and spoke to locals who said that they had experienced poor service from the pizzeria manager before and had not returned in years. We hope that other readers take note of this and do not have to experience the same.

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Saturday, February 17, 2007