La Caverna - West Dorset

The venue is underwhelming, it's underground and quite musty. The food can be really good, when they try.

On arrival two of the quests arrived 10 minutes late and was greeted by the chief outside and were not made to feel welcome. He told them to go through what looked like a lounge and left and down stairs. No welcome! Service was very slow with all guests getting a drink. We were still getting our drinks when the last guest arrived, who ironically got served her drinking before two of the other guests. We pre ordered starters and mains prior to arrival. One main did not arrive until 20 minutes (although the side of spinach had arrived so this had to be sent back to be re-heated) after everyone else’s as it had been forgotten. Chips were steak chips which were just warm and tasteless. Desserts took over an hour to arrive. Four of us choose the same dessert and were given half portions as not enough. It was delicious but just no enough and very expensive for what we had. The Bill took a long time to be generated as the waitress reported that it was a big bill to calculate. A member of our party who runs a public house helped her with it to speed it up. We asked to pay separately as some members of the party were not drinking and only had one course rather than three. This was met with ‘well this will take another one hour to sort out’. We all sorted out our totals and added 10% as this was requested upon booking. The chief was very rude as we were leaving and told us that we were not on time for the booking and one person had arrived much later than everyone else. This was awful to experience and was highly unprofessional. The restaurant was very grubby and one that would not be recommended and in my opinion should be avoided.

The whole experience was different and special . On booking I was asked if we could order out starters and mains over the phone . My group of four had no problem with this request . On arriving we were taken down a set of stairs into the main restaurant to our table . Wine drinks were ordered and our starters arrived . They were absolutely lovely . But the best was yet to come the mains all cooked to perfection looked fantastic and tasted like angels dancing on your tongue . I would highly recommend this little family restaurant and will be returning on our next visit to Dorsey

Back for the 1st time since the pandemic. A lovely meal in a restaurant that is a bit special. Good service. Authentic Sicilian food. Great!

La Caverna is a special restaurant that ticks all the right boxes. We thoroughly enjoyed our meals here and are looking forward to returning.