"We have been to the chubby cherub several times, back when it was a small restaurant opposite AM:PM, and have always enjoyed our evenings here. The food was always excellent and the atmosphere too. However last night this wasn’t the case. We arrived for booking, to be told we were booked at (we def booked for so we went off to a nearby bar for a quick drink and came back at to be told our table wasn’t yet ready, and to stand over by the bar and wait. We got a wine list and ordered a bottle of red, and at we were shown to our table. Within of being seated and given menus (which were vastly different to the previous times we had been, very little choice for pasta etc which for an Italian restaurant was very odd) we were approached by different waitresses to take our order. We had to politely ask the waitress to give us some time to read the menu. Clearly that was a mistake as we then couldn’t get a waitress’ attention to place our order. Eventually we ordered starters, one of which wasn’t available(we weren’t informed of this when given the menu, I think its standard practice in most restaurants to inform customers of items not available/sold out) The starters of meatballs and Arancini arrived out, and we tucked in. The meatballs were dried out and totally tasteless and served on a bed of cos lettuce?! (See pic below)This in itself was soo weird. The Arancini had no taste at all and was very dry and stodgy. We decided at to call it a night, we cancelled our mains and asked for the bill. The manager came over and asked why, “did we have a family emergency or something?” We politely explained that the experience had gone from bad to worse, she kept looking around her as my husband was talking, totally distracted and disinterested in the complaint. We ended up paying for and finishing our wine and leaving, got home and ordered a delivery pizza. Not exactly the night out we had planned. There are a lot of really good restaurants in Belfast, a lot of competition, and we chose to spend our weekend off since December in the Chubby Cherub. Disappointed was an understatement and it’s safe to say we won’t be back. I should also say a friend of mine was here two weeks ago and didn’t have a good meal, she advised me to cancel my booking, but I thought her experience was a one off. Man was I wrong. Take my advice, take your money and go one of the amazing restaurants in Belfast, there are lots of them!"
