East Side Mario's — Restaurant in Barrie

Revising my review based on my visit tonight 2 September 2022.

We came for dinner and were seated in the same table as last time. The restaurant was not as busy as our last visit, but was far from slow. It was not nearly as loud, the music was a pleasant,

We were delighted when we saw that Ashley was our server again.

Everything was excellent tonight. Do yourself a favour and ask for a table in Ashley's section.

The food was perfect tonight, temperature was perfect, it came out exactly when it should have. Just an overall great experience.

I really appreciated Zoe came over to our table to make sure that everything was great. We will definately be back.

----‐-------------☆☆☆☆☆-------------

We were there tonight for a family dinner, all adults.

There were a lot of parties, it was so loud. We could not talk, the restaurant would benefit from having some sort of divider between the dining room and Bar I think that this would help a lot with the noise levels.

Our waitress took our order and then did not come back. The bar staff that kept assisting us, Ashleigh was the bartender's name and she was amazing! If there is a way, try to be seated in the bar and have Ashleigh and her cobartender look after you. They were both very very helpful and made the experience as good as could be. Ashleigh should be commended. They are the only reason I tipped.

Of our party of 6 half of us had cold food that had to be sent back. The bread arrived and they brought 2 loaves for the entire table, which was fine. But they also only brought 3 margarine........

It was so noisy we could not carry on a conversation. This is not their fault, it was the poor design for managing noise, and the poor food quality/temperature and the fact that we never saw our server.

EDIT: Just spoke to Zoe, she was extremely helpful. We discussed the entire situation. She listened to what happened, and really wanted to understand what had happened so as to make sure it doesn't happen again. She apologized for the issues and was very concerned about how best to resolve things. I was really impressed with the follow up, and the genuine desire to make things better in the future. I look forward to going back and giving them another chance.

As such I will be revising my rating, in anticipation of a better experience during my next visit. I will update this review after my next visit and hope to be able to make it a 5* review...

So here's the thing. Obviously I was hoping for a great experience, otherwise I wouldn't have made this place the dinner choice for my family of 5. Unfortunately, a great experience is not what we had. The fact that I had to go to the bar and ask if a server was ever going to come to our table, set the tone for a bad night. When we finally did get a server, she was fine, but I shouldn't have had to ask for one.

Once we ordered, we waited 45 minutes for the food to arrive. It wasn't even that busy! 45 minutes!

The food itself was such a let down. I ordered the chicken parmesan sandwich, the wife ordered a penne pasta and the kids had chicken and fries. Not only was the parmesan sandwich much smaller than pictured on the website, but it was mediocre tasting at best. For $15, I expected a large portion and I expected it to taste phenomenal. It hardly had any mushrooms, peppers or sauce on it. I've made better ones at home.. If you want a real parmesan sandwich, go north a bit to Mondos. $11 will get you a huge sandwich absolutely loaded with ingredients.

The penne was unfortunately bland. There's no other way to describe it. I tried it to see for myself and my wife wasn't kidding. Whatever sauce they're using is pathetic. It was like eating pasta without sauce - that's how it tasted. They could have used store bought PC Black lable sauce instead and that would have been an improvement from this.

The kids chicken strips were fine as far as chicken strips go. A little dry for my liking. The fries were also overcooked. If you want amazing chicken strips, go to Jack Astor's down the street. The only other caveat would be that my teenage daughter ordered off of the adult menu, but for whatever reason, they brought her a kids size drink with a lid... Seriously?

The manager came to our table 3 times, so I'll give him credit for trying to make things better. Once to apologize for the server issue. Second to bring us our drinks and lastly to ask us how our meal was.

I was honest about the disappointing meal, so he knocked off $15 from the bill. I appreciate that he did that and I see how much he wanted to make it better, but with so many other choices around, I won't be returning again. I can forgive the service issues, but the food quality is not something I...

EDIT: 06/08/2023

The General Manager of the restaurant was kind enough to reach out to me to apologize for the poor experience and offer us a gift card, and was quite sincere about making it up to us on our next visit. I am updating my review to 4/5 stars based on the great customer service follow up, thanks Zoey! I took my mother out to dinner here for Mother's Day May 14th. We had a reservation, and the restaurant was understandably very busy and packed to capacity. We arrived at 7:00 p.m., and it took over an hour for us to receive our food at approximately 8:10 p.m.

It took so long for us to get our food, that our server ended up going home without even telling us. Our new server came by to check in on us and we informed her that we have been waiting over an hour and still hadn't received our food. The table beside us had the same issue.

It's understandable that restaurants can be busy, especially on special occasions like Mother's Day, but at some point you have to draw the line when it comes to waiting for your meal, and waiting an hour is unacceptable. The restaurant should have prepared for a busy night by making sure they had sufficient kitchen staff on hand to deal with the increased patrons.

When the meal finally came, the food was less than stellar, and the portions quite small for the price.

We were not offered any discounts, compensations, or even some free bread for our wait. Very disappointing experience overall, and we certainly won't be coming back here on the next...