East Side Mario's — Restaurant in Ottawa

I’m writing this review to treat families with small children better! Your top priority goal as a waiter or waitress is to ensure that couples with small children are served efficiently so they can leave efficiently. Honestly, one of the worst customer service I’ve experienced at this location at east side Mario. I’ll never go back nor will I ever recommended to any friends, family or colleagues. We were a family of five, three children ages 3 to 8. We waited 10 minutes to be seated. The waiter that finally came and got us just by his approach seemed to be in a rush and very busy. That was the cue for us to leave but still I sat down hoping thing would get better. It did not. It got worse. At first I was thinking maybe they were under staff because they surely weren’t working as a team. Mind you today is Sunday and it’s very nice out and there’s 3 servers serving and cleaning the whole place! Insane.

Finally, a lady with black hair and perky lips came to take our order, she was not friendly, it seems as if she wished we were not there. Like we just added to her job. It honestly felt like that by her attitude. We ordered all you can eat soups, salad and bread. We received one soup, and four bread and one salad and we were there passed three hours. Garden salad was not fresh so we didn’t touched it not once did she questioned how we find the soup or salad. My poor kids were so hungry we all devoured and shared the one soups and breads 🥖 Finally, our food came, she never came to ask if we needed anything nor did she cleaned our dishes off the table. My kids wanted the chillers drink so we ordered three chillers drink. I kid you not she came and delivered the drinks on the table without cleaning the dishes. I was so frustrated with her service I started stacking the dishes really loud and she came to cleared them up. If you hate your job and you hate people customer service isn’t for you!!! Eastside Mario DO BETTER! it’s spring! Hire more...

My family and I truly enjoyed going to Eastside Mario’s. I think over the past year we would go at least once every month. The last time we had gone, it was probably around end of July. That was the first time I can say the service was quite poor. Poor in the sense that the main meal took about 35 minutes to arrive. They had promptly given us our appetizers and starters which, of course, was great however because the main course took forever, we were so full on the appetizers that by the time the actual main course came, we pretty much packed everything up and left immediately. At the same time, we were also trying to juggle the tantrums of our toddler who has a pretty short window behaving before he starts walking around and giving us a hard time. Not blaming the restaurant at all for that but when a main course takes 35 minutes to arrive, it’s quite annoying to say the least when you’re stuffed on bread and random appetizers and have to pack the main course up after taking one bite. Anyways, for this reason, we hadn’t gone for a while, at least not as often as we typically would go. We decided to give it another shot yesterday. Wasn’t crazy busy, went around 3:30. Unfortunately the exact same situation had happened…starters came, main course took 30 minutes only for our server to come in and say hey it’ll be 10 more minutes. At that point we already planned what we were going to do, just pack everything up and go. The whole point of dining in, aside from the ambiance is to enjoy the experience of having your food while you’re still hungry and not waiting over half an hour. They apparently also increased the price of the pizza. I do like coming here as it’s family friendly, but I will not be going there again and playing a guessing game of when my food is going to come. Other than that… service is always pretty good and everyone here is great. Sucks we won’t...

I would NEVER go to this location or any other East Side ever again!!! We were so disappointed with our experience with both the food and service. Once we were seated the waitress brought over the bread (which has really shrunk in its size) and plates but we had no cutlery to use. Once we got everything we needed we placed our order for food. We ordered two pasta dishes with chicken breasts, the Veal Limone and cheese cappelletti from the kids menu. We got salads with all three meals and were given one serving of salad and never asked again if we needed more (all you can eat salad). We literally had to play find the chicken breast in the pasta dishes. It seemed they took one breast and had split it between the two dishes. There was barely any chicken to be seen. I don't eat veal but I could tell from the dish something was wrong. The veal was overdone and so extremely chewy to a point where it was so difficult to cut into. Either it was left in the fryer too long or sat on the ledge waiting to be picked up but wasn't. The cheese cappelletti was very dry in some spots and clearly missing sauce. My daughter barely ate it and I don't blame her - I wouldn't enjoy dried pasta either. We had to remind the waitress her meal came with dessert. The new menu sucks!! The options are not all that great and the portions have decreased significantly while the prices have gone up. I understand everything is getting expensive but honestly give people the quality and quantity they are paying for. What an overall disappointment. We will be taking out...