Mamma Mia — Restaurant in Almaty

This restaurant seems to be another staple of the local dining scene. We visited it numerous times and at different locations during our previous visit four years ago. It looks like they are still keeping up their game and serving decent food. They offer a wide variety of pasta and other basic Italian dishes, with a bit of local adaptation at times. The portions are very generous here. Currently, they are offering Machete steak on the seasonal menu, and it was quite interesting. The Machete steak cut seems to be gaining popularity in the CIS countries. You won't find much of it in North America or Western Europe. Essentially it is a part of brisket with pretty good marbling and distinctive meaty taste. It is by far not the best cut of beef out there, but here they serve it with Chimichurri sauce, and that combination deserves more attention. I enjoyed it a lot and will serve Chimichurri with not prime beef cuts when grilling at home. I also want to point out awesome mustard-based dressing in Bambino salad. You can add it to any greens and get a flavorsome salad. They also have a solid dessert game here, so make sure to leave some room for that. My personal favorites are ice cream cake and meringue with...

I ordered 3 meals from this restaurant, they sent the complete wrong order with just one meal. There was no ticket or any way to identify the bag, so how on earth is the delivery driver meant to identify whose order this is??? At first, on the phone with the restaurant, they said they’d send us the correct order with another delivery guy. So, we waited another half hour. Nothing. We contacted them again, and they basically said never mind, they won’t do anything. Not only did they refuse to refund us the money we paid for 3 meals, but they refused to correct their mistake and send us the correct order. Now it is 10pm, we’ve been waiting nearly two ours for this restaurant to figure out their problem, and we still have nothing to eat. This place sucks and I do not recommend. Absolutely unacceptable customer service and we were literally scammed out of our money. I’ve added a picture of the one meal we got for 3 people, it’s not even one of the...

Fake Italian

Long Story: After having a tasty dinner at Mama Mia in Essentai Mall, decided to give the original one a try. What a disappointment.

To start, the ambience is not nearly as nice. But the biggest issue was the food.

First, "Sicilian salad" resembled rather what Italians would call "Insalata Russa". Having just returned from Sicily, I can guarantee you this is not a "Sicilian" salad. The cannelloni was swimming in an unidentifiable creamy sauce that tasted of tartar sauce. The minestrone soup tasted like it was cooked three days ago and just reheated.

Bottom line, I don't understand how can there be such a huge difference in the quality of the food between two restaurants of the same chain. Is it because of a...