Milano's Ristorante — Restaurant in Nanaimo

Yet another place on our "we really need to go there" list for the last 9 months, we finally made it into Milano's for dinner tonight.

The joint was jumping at 6pm and we had about a 5 minute wait for a table (a slightly cramped two top, but it did the job.)

We opted to start with an order of the spinach and artichoke dip, and after waiting an almost too long period of time, it was delivered. Sadly, it is nothing to write home about. It's an ok portion size and you're given a large amount of warm pita bread to eat it with, but the flavours just aren't there. It tastes like spinach and cream cheese and not much else. For some, that's probably fine, but I just wanted a bit more out of it.

For our mains, I opted for the moussaka, a dish I haven't had in quite some time, which makes deciding whether or not I enjoyed it a bit tough. I think it was not bad. Felt a little dried out and bland in spots but was overall fine. It comes with a decent sized Caesar salad that we enjoyed, and some more slightly different pita with house made tzatziki, which was very good.

My partner opted for the mac and cheese with garlic bread, which was a solid portion that was fine but overall bland (sensing a theme yet?). Her garlic bread, unfortunately, was very oily and unappetizing (but dipping it in the mac and cheese sauce made it better.)

For dessert, we shared a piece of the creme brulee cheesecake, which was the star of the evening. A decent size, it comes adorned with enough whipped cream and caramel sauce to give a diabetic a heart murmur. My only wish is that the brulee'd top was a bit more brulee'd.

Overall, it wasn't a bad experience, and we'll come back to try the pizza (and have more of that cheesecake!) But the non dessert courses didn't blow our hair back even slightly, and they are trying to punch a bit above their weight class when it comes to pricing.

Above dinner for two with sodas came to...

What a poor experience recently. Food ordered was expensive $50 for 1 ravioli and 1 medium pizza. We wanted something good thinking Milanos was the place to order from. The food was so bad, I felt ill after just eating a little of pizza and a few bites of the ravioli. The ravioli tasted like it was made with old, fridge tasting sauce and noodles did not have a fresh texture to them. I think it was foul and made me sick as well. The pizza was dry, little sauce, arrived barely warm. It did not taste like a fresh baked pizza.the garlic bread tasted like the dirty,oily pan it was grilled in. It was disgusting. I am not a picky eater but something went horribly wrong at the NANAIMO MILANOS!

That was the fixable part. I contacted Milanos twice to resolve the issue. All I wanted was the food I threw out replaced. I thought they would be all over it to make it right. Here is the worst part of the experience which is that they did not acknowledge any messages or emails about my complaint. I write this regretfully as I love to support local restaurants. This was such a turn off I need to share the results of my experience to save someone else money, hassles and from being sick. Hopefully management can turn this around or they won’t last serving garbage at high prices.

Milanos you can still contact me. I...

What a horrible experience!! It was FREEZING in there. I’m not kidding. It felt like walking into a meat locker. I’m not someone who’s always cold. If anything I’m the opposite and find places a bit on the warm side. My mom (always cold) never would have survived in there. It was a mild September day, not even hot outside. I thought it might just be freezing in the entrance, but no, it was even colder at our table. They moved us to another table right beside the kitchen, but we still had ice cold air blowing us. I asked 3 different people to turn the air conditioning down, but they all said they’re not allowed to. Two of the people I spoke to said it’s always cold even for them, and they’re working hard! I finally asked why the management doesn’t care about their guests’ comfort. She said it’s set for the kitchen staff’s comfort. The calamari was terrible. Flavourless and CHEWY, not fresh at all. The Greek salad was okay, but barely had any feta on it. One of my friends had the mousaka which was good, but she said it wasn’t worth freezing over. I think our server must have gone for a break because we didn’t see her for quite awhile. I finally asked someone else to please bring us more wine. Our glasses had been empty for at least 10 minutes. There were 4 of us, and every single one said they’ll...