The Prescott — Restaurant in Ottawa

A friend told me about The Prescott, saying good things about it and how it's been around for many years. Decided to give it a try, and it was one of the worst food decisions I've ever made since coming to Ottawa 6 years ago. I hate to post a review like this about a local restaurant, but it's necessary as my nearly $30 order was completely wasted. I ordered the pasta with meat sauce and, as another reviewer mentioned previously, it literally tasted like chef-boyarde. My thought was that I'd get a plate of authentic, traditional Italian style pasta + meat sauce, yet what I got was a plate of food that was bland, tasteless, and like it was microwaved. Also the pasta noodles were overcooked and the quality seemed like they were bought for 0.60 cents at a local grocery store. I do take some responsibility upon myself being that I ordered here with high positive expectations before even trying the food, in part due to it being a long-standing restaurant which I though would automatically mean long-standing quality. This was a big mistake on my part.

Very disappointed about my food experience with this place. I get that local businesses are going through tough times for the last 1+ year - hence one of the reasons why I don't like posting reviews of this nature - but this was just unacceptable. I could've made this same dish at home in 10 minutes/less at a tenth of the price I paid for it, and it would've tasted the same if not better and I have no chef background. I will mention that I've never tried any of their other dishes, so perhaps maybe those are tastier/more popular among their customers. However, this experience was enough for me to not dine at the Prescott in the future.

Regardless how my food experience was, I wish them well and hopefully they can make some changes to their pasta dishes...

For the life of me I cannot understand why this place has such high reviews. The food is absolutely atrocious and service is mediocre. I was with one other person and came here for lunch. We ordered meatball sandwich with fries and beef dip sandwich with soup of the day (pea soup).

The meat sauce in the sandwich tasted like chef boyardee meat sauce, the bread was basic white bread, the meatball tasted like just unseasoned ground beef. The roast beef sandwich tasted like subpar grocery store deli meat and the au jus was not au jus, it was gravy with an entire container of nutmeg dumped into it. The pea soup tasted worse than a Campbell's soup can.

The only thing that was good was the French fries. Even then, the fries were clearly from a bag, unsalted, and were plain. The fact that they were the best part tells you just how awful the entire meal was.

I was so offended by what we were given I was seriously tempted to leave without paying. (Obviously I did pay, but it is time and money that I will always regret spending.) I will be going out of my way to tell people to not come here.

You are in Little Italy. There are countless places in the area, both cheaper and more expensive, that actually care about what they give you.

I would not come back here if I...

Went for a UFC event and it was awful. We had two servers, one who kept giving us the wrong price for things (she said things were cheaper than they were), and another who barley came by. We put in an order for food and after waiting at least 30 minutes, the first server came by and told us there was a delay and we could just cancel if we wanted. A friend at our table had received their order shortly after, and the quality of food seemed poor. For the amount you pay, it is not worth it.

My two drinks were $40 in total. When I asked why the price was double of what the female server told me, the second server explained she was wrong, and its best to drink before coming here to save money. One Vodka Cran was $20 (the most I have ever paid). When I spoke to a manager about it, he gave me a card that offered one free drink after the first was paid for. The drink could only be a beer, or glass of wine. This card also expired June 30th 2024, which was shortly after I was given it.

Lastly, the place is so crammed that our table was constantly in the way of servers or anyone playing pool. This meant constanly moving or dodging pool sticks and servers (there were no other tables to move to on the...