Marcello Ristorante & Pizzeria — Restaurant in Vancouver

Marcellos, when we went, was packed. Very busy! The restaurant itself isn't that large, but large enough and popular enough that they could fill up pretty quickly. We decided to check this place out for dinner, because there were some good reviews on here.

Our experience at Marcellos was "ok". The front desk greeted us warmly. Because it was very busy the evening we went, we were told that for a table for 3, it would've taken about 45 minutes before being seated. We decided to wait. 5 min into waiting, there was a table close to the front that became available, but the only caveat was that we had to give up the table by 8pm. We were seated around 6:45pm, and didn't get to order until closer to 7pm. By the time the food came, we had maybe about 15-20 min to eat, before feeling like we had to leave (because it was almost 8pm). One of my gripes is that we felt we were rushed to give up our table. Not a fault of the restaurant, of course.

In terms of the service. The woman who served us was friendly towards us. Made us feel welcomed, even though she herself was extremely busy with other tables in her area. She noticed us, even though, we were closer to the door. I noticed when she gave us plates, that the plates were still oily (indication that the dishes weren't cleaned very well). We asked for replacement dishes, and she quickly abliged.

The food was very good! We had the Spaghetti Bolognaise and this spicy pizza. Forgot the name of the pizza. But the pizza was very good! It had a good kick to the pizza. We loved it. The Spaghetti Bolognaise was very good too. We recommend the pizza!

Ambiance was good. There was a dark, and warm tone to the room. The design of the room reminded me of Europe, so it really felt like we stepped into another country almost. I appreciated the thought that went into the design and layout of the restaurant. Obvious that they put thought into how they wanted their customers to experience when they step into their business.

My biggest gripe is the parking. Boy, was this a tough one, and probably a reason why I've docked a star from the review. Finding paid parking isn't necessarily hard, but like most people, we don't want to be paying for parking if we don't have to. It can be quite expensive for parking. But FREE parking almost doesn't exist in this area of Commercial Drive. It's REALLY hard to find it. And if you do "seemingly" find it, there probably is a parking restriction for the neighborhood. It took us almost 20 min to find free parking that wasn't too far to walk to (we have a toddler to consider).

Overall, even with the parking challenges, we'd recommend Marcellos to give a try.

My breakdown: Food 4/5 Service 4/5 Ambiance 4/5 Price...

i came here with my girlfriend 2 days ago for a nice date because i only see her once a week. we were sat on the patio because we were a party of two and we were the only people out there at that time. we ordered, were given water and had good, quick service. a few tables got sat after we had ordered and we noticed they all got their food before us. we arrived at 6:10 and had ordered by 6:20. we were very polite and didn’t mention anything at first about the other tables being served before us, but then those people started to finish and leave before we even received our food. at about 7:25 i went inside to find someone because our server had been actively ignoring our table for the past hour. i spoke to one woman who seemed very shocked we’d been waiting over an hour for our food and told me she’d get my server to come talk to us. our server comes out to the patio, walks past our table and right back inside. at this point a woman at a near by table talks to us and says her husband and son were served but not her and she’s been waiting about an hour. she gets a manager outside and tells her to talk to us first. the manager just tells me they put a rush on our food and goes right back to talking to the other woman. didn’t even let me get a word in. at this point it’s 7:45 and i have a bus to catch because i live in abbotsford and i travel out to vancouver to see my girlfriend so we have limited time together. so i let the manager know we no longer have time to eat here and she says i’ll get it packed up and again, right back to the other woman. this woman tells the manager how disappointed she is in the service and nobody has come to apologize or say anything to her and i agree. i then stand up, as does my girlfriend and i tell the woman i no longer am going to spend my money here and how we have been completely disregarded and then she apologizes to me and says the kitchen just got stacked. we were one of maybe 4 tables sat when we had ordered so that’s a bullshit excuse that doesn’t explain how other, larger parties were sat, served, and left in the time we were waiting. we left and got pizza at 4 brothers pizza down the road (great service by the way! very fast.) i’m not sure if you’ll experience what we did, but if you’re 16 and trying to do something nice, go somewhere else. i really hope it wasn’t because we were young and our server made assumptions about us because that would be quite disappointing, but we will never know because the woman ignored us and didn’t bother to come talk to us in the hour and 45 minutes we were there. don’t...

Review

As a family of three of us, we eat out at restaurants 3 to 5 times a week regularly.

That was the worst service by far. Nothing could compare or come close to that.

Our server, she did not know anything that was on the menu and had to keep asking us to point it out on the menu, the number and the item and the name of the dish we were ordering. When she was opening our first bottle of wine, she brutally tried to open it. We were afraid that she was going to break it in front of us. It was like it was her first bottle of wine to open. she then took the cork in the wine bottle and threw it in the garbage. We asked for it as we were not finishing the wine when she said that she threw it in the garbage five minutes later she offered a used one from the bar. I declined her offer of somebody else’s used, cork in the bottle of wine that I wasn’t going to finish to take home.

When she went and opened the second bottle of wine brutally trying to open, she actually spilled wine out of the bottle. As she’s taking the cork off the corkscrew, she literally grabs the cork with the palm of her hand, wrapping her hand around the complete cork as she put it on the table. That was completely gross, cause I never knew where her hands have been the last three or four hours, and that Court was gonna go back in my bottle of wine. Just absolutely disgusting.

She came back to a table 3 times and every time she came back, she was speaking different accent that we could not understand. It was extremely strange and rude. We totally believe that she was just trying to be funny with these weird accents.

Our two kids ordered Alfredo entrées each and she brought them a pizza with four plate plates !

She couldn’t understand what extra clams meant in our Alle Vongole pasta. She continue to bring us takeout boxes and ask us to pay our bill while we still had food on the table that we were eating.

When we were finally ready to pay the bill, she was nowhere to be seen and went missing for 20 minutes. We literally had to get up and go find someone to help us and take our payment.

Every time she did something wrong, she would say to us. “I’m bad again” We’ve been going here for over 20 years and if we ever have that server again, we’re never coming back. It was awful experience. I couldn’t believe she was even hired...