Portobello Ristorante Pizzeria

this is my new favorite : fresh, yummy seafood & crispy pizzas, excellent value for money & always a great deal of specials to choose from.
the only drawback is it's rather small , so had to book several days in advance to get a table on a week-end.

I'm Italian and I totally agree with you guys!
It's such a shame to keep our BAD habits when we've got a chance to change and to learn from other cultures.
The manager/staff of this restaurant are not clear about the difference between being professional and being friendly(or at least pretend to be).
In this case it's a real shame because food is proper italian food and pizza is great!
Lets put it this way…this is one of the example of the old style Italian migration culture. You go in a different country and pretend you're still home ignoring any chance of improving your precious knowledge. It doesn't work like this anymore Portobello crew! Com'on!!
After all of this social insight…I'm stil going back there because I like the food, the location is convenient…and I know how to survive in the Italian jungle :) !

I've been in this restaurant a couple of times with my girlfriend and it has been always amazing, great food, lovely staff and excellent value!!! Last time has been Saturday the 7th of May and something went wrong that night: I arrived around 8:30pm with no reservation so I knew I had to queue for a while to get a table outside. The place was completely messy, there was a tall guy with grizzly hair trying to manage the place with no results, he told me I had to wait 30 minutes for a table for 2 outside: that's fine, we'll wait. There were something like 10/15 people waiting with us. This tall guy was totally over excited, shouting against every member of the staff and badly faking kindness towards the customers: after 30 mins he sent a waiter (with 2 glasses of prosecco) to tell us they needed 15 mins more; the waiter has been very nice even if he looked stressed and scared from the tall bully. After other 15 mins other people came over trying to get a table on the terrace and I noticed that if they were known from the extemporaneous manager they get the table easily… what a bad italian way to run a beautiful place like this: we obviously left!!!
I hope the managers I've seen in this place before were just on holidays otherwise I don't think I'll come back. Mind the tall grizzly when you get there… and run away!!!

Date of reservation: Friday 13th May

Having visited Portobello Pizzeria a number of times over the last year, I was excited to suggest to my friend that I take her for a delicious pizza and a bottle of wine after work on Friday.

I made the reservation for 6:45pm and we were seated in doors (I was not told that outdoor seating was available at the time of booking, which was a shame).

After just a couple of minutes the waiter came to take our wine order – we thought this was very quick and felt a little hurried.

Very shortly afterwards the waiter returned to take our food order. We apologied and said that we hadn't yet had a chance to look as we'd just ordered the wine. The waiter immediately informed us that the table will be required back within the hour. This left us feeling hurried and unwelcome. My friend said she wanted to leave as she did not want to spend money dining in a restaurant which clearly doesn't value the patrons.

Two minutes later another waiter arrived at our table to take our order, by which time we felt very uncomfortable. I informed the waiter that we wanted to leave now as we felt so unwelcome and hurried. The waiter was apologetic and said he would give us a little longer to look at the menu.

After 5 minutes we ordered and our dinner arrived in a timely manner. It was delicious just as I had promised my friend. My friend enjoyed a pasta dish but admitted to food envy when my calzone arrived!
We decided to stay for dessert as we still had 10 minutes before our hour cut-off (a hiddeous situation) and decided to share a chocolate ice cream.

When the bill arrived we noticed a service charge had be added. Under normal circumstances we would be more than happy to pay this service charge and more often than not we top it up but rounding our bill up, but on this occasion we took exception to this addition.
We politely explained to the waiter that we didn't want to pay the service charge, to which he was clearly put out by that and walked away without saying a word and took payment from another table. He then went to the owner of the restaurant and they were both pointing and looking at us like we were scum. The owner eventually came over to us and said that we had requested we speak with him. We explained that we hadn't said that and attempted to explain our reasons for not wanting to pay the service charge. The owner was so disinterested he didn't even respond to us, just taking our cards and processing the payment minus the service charge.

I have never received such awful service and left feeling very embarrased to have recommended Portobello Pizzeria to my friend. The whole experience was tarnished by the terrible service. The worst part by far was the lack of care from the Owner, who seemed to preoccupied with the locals than those who had made a special trip for a Friday night treat.

Went there without a reservation. The manager knows me because I live in the neighborhood and went there a few times already. The restaurant was fully booked but he managed to give us a table. Unfortunately the manager kicked us out of the table after 90 minutes or so while we were talking. At no point were we warned that we had the table for a certain amount of time. He might have sold an additional meal that night but he definitely lost a customer, who is a neighbor and therefore with a great chance of coming back regularly. The food is just OK, not better than all the other Italian restaurants on Kensington Park Rd.

Sadly this restaurant's success is causing them major logistical problems in their tiny ground floor kitchen. A great shame because our first meal there soon after it opened was good and the location and ambience is too.

We arrived just after 9.00am and had ordered by 9.15pm. The last of the four main courses (chicken with pasta) arrived at 10.25pm!

The bill was £131.63 including the £14.63 service charge. They brought one desert and a sundae glass full of whipped cream by way of apology…

Their best bet would be to convert their gloomy basement dining area into a new kitchen releasing the much lighter ground floor to more tables with the space between them for waiters to pass without the continuous bumping into the backs of customers' chairs while risking spilling food on their clothes.