Italissimo — Restaurant in Riga

Very delicious food and welcoming service. The menu provides a nice variety of food (not only pizza, but also pasta, salads, appetizers etc). Waiting time was not long at all. The restaurant is very spacious and clean, which is usually rare to see for restaurants such size. There is also a children room. The waiters here are real professionals - it was a nice touch to our visit to realize, that waiters are really polite, memorize orders by heart and even remember, who is ordered what from our table. As a group of 4, we ordered a pizza, drink and a desert each, paid 114eur total as of August 2024 - vary reasonable, keeping in mind the quality. We also tried pizzas and deserts from each other, and concluded, that all pizzas from here are very delicious. I believe their secret is in the dough recipe - despite the big pizza size (32cm), the pizzas are very well-balanced, so you don't feel heavy after eating it and there is still a room for a desert. Another nice touch, that makes the restaurant more sophisticated - they have a separate desert menu, in case you forgot to keep the big menu after making an order. we tried tiramisu, pannacota, pavlova and some sort of brownie with ice cream (don't remember the name of this position in the menu). All of the deserts were delicious too, but my friends collectively agreed that pavlova was above others and exceeded expectations. Revervation is required here in advance. This time (Sunday afternoon) we were lucky to book our table just 30min in advance, but I don't recommend being so spontaneous with this place - over the last 6 months I had maybe 3-4 attempts to get here last minute and this is the first time we finally got in and only with the condition, that we will leave by specific time. We had 1.5h for our dining, and we did not feel like the visit was rushed even with the existing time limit, so another ++ points for the personel. So probably reservation week (or at least couple days) in advance would be the safest option. Our dining has finished with complementary shots and we left happy and satisfied. After having such a positive experience here, we really would like to come back some day and try other positions in the menu, the visit really exceeded...

Firstly, credit where credit is due. They managed to accommodate an 18-person group on account of a last minute cancellation and the food was decent.

Unfortunately, the above was over-shadowed by the glaringly unprofessional behaviour of the self-proclaimed manager.

We initially believed there to be a misunderstanding or a language barrier when he ceased to pour wine for a lady in our group while forbidding one of us from finishing pouring her wine.

When we asked for clarification, he was quite snide and accused her husband of interrupting him. Naturally, we were slightly shocked. She reassured him it was fine as it's her husband and he didn't mean to interrupt, he just wanted to ensure we got a bottle of red too.

His response?

"Oh, I can tell he must be difficult to live with"

This was followed by a 15 second stare-down and when asked if he could calm down, his response was a very sneery, and I quote "maybe". Upon asking again, in disbelief, he confidently reiterated "maybe" as he leaned in with an aggressive leer.

Needless to say, none of us felt welcome after this point.

The very sweet waitress (Anna, I think her name was), did come around to apologize and her service was exceptional.

The cherry on the top was when we brought this up to the front desk, the response was a simple "It's sad.".

While we cannot teach a grown man manners, it would be expected that the front desk would learn the value of an apology.

As for the proprietors, I hope this is a once-off, for your sake.

To the manager, if you care to read this, you must be quite the difficult person to...

I don’t often leave 1 star reviews but have no choice in this case unfortunately. Our pregnant friend’s birthday was ruined by the most obnoxious, rude and self absorbed waiter who purported to be the manager of the establishment in truly bizarre circumstances. If this individual (blonde, old) is in fact the manager of the restaurant, the owners need to take a long hard look at themselves and the hands in which they have entrusted the management of their restaurant. Our group of 18 people have never experienced anything like this in our lives. The behaviour of this man brought some of the group to tears. A bizarre misunderstanding about ordering of wine caused this man to snatch a bottle out of the hands of one guest, a napkin out of the hands of another, followed by verbally abusing others at the table. When one guest asked if there was someone reasonable we could speak to, the answer was “no”. This man ensured that none of us would ever return to this awfully managed establishment. To put some final context around this, one of the waitresses came to our table and apologised to the group for the behaviour of this man. This made us believe that he in fact WAS the manager and we felt more sorry for the poor members of staff that have to deal with these awful, prison-like, working circumstances on a daily basis. Message to the owner: do something to save your restaurant from what can only be described as the worst service any of us have ever...