Decaro’s — Restaurant in Alton

I am updating my review of Decaro’s that was first posted five years ago. This review is from July, 2023.

Decaro’s is an excellent, locally owned Italian/Pizza place that has outstanding food, a unique atmosphere both in terms of the physical layout and items and vibe, and we experienced really good service.

We dined at Decaro’s on a Friday evening, around 7:00pm with two adults and two children under the age of 10.

The Food: We took advantage of the Alton Restaurant Week special that was still offered and included two dinner salads, an appetizer, and a two topping medium pizza for $29.99. We then ordered another large pizza as the entire family was quite hungry!

The ravioli’s came first and were hot, toasted (read: fried) to perfection, along with marinara sauce, as you can see in the photo. The toasted raviolis were outstanding! I am not going to rank them in the top 2-3 that I have had in the STL area, but they are very, very good and we highly enjoyed them and I would recommend them to anyone eating at Decaro’s. The dinner salads were also quite good.

We chose a meatball and pepperoni for the medium and a pepperoni for the large. The pizzas are excellent! As you can see from the photos, they are thin crust pizzas and they truly are thin crust. They are St. Louis Style pizzas so think Imo’s but the cheese is not straight provel like Imo’s. It is delicious! Both pizzas had a great taste and were devoured by the entire family.

The Service: We had excellent service on this trip. The children were treated incredibly well as were the adults. Drinks were refilled consistently, the server was very friendly to all, and we had no complaints whatsoever.

The Atmosphere: We ate in the “bar” area toward the back since Decaro’s was busy when we arrived. It is a neat atmosphere all the way around and the “wedge-shaped” restaurant has a slightly different feel in the front as a more traditional Italian eatery with huge windows facing the Mississippi River while the back has more of a speakeasy vibe with televisions, a bar, and gaming machines. We loved it!

I highly recommend Decaro’s if you are in the mood for Italian, especially pizza. We...

Me and my boyfriend walk in here to get dinner and have a nice date. As soon as we walked in, this older gentleman with a cigar in his mouth lets me pass, then shoulder checks my boyfriend. My boyfriend shrugged it off and kept walking until the gentleman yelled after him saying something along the lines of "excuse you, boy" and my boyfriend responded back with "yeah excuse you too". This man charges my boyfriend and gets his face, my boyfriend stands his ground, keeping his hands to himself when this man shoves my boyfriend across the restaurant. My boyfriend gets in his face, obviously ready to defend himself when this man throws my boyfriend across tables and punches him the in face. Mind you, my boyfriend never hit him once. A random bystander was asked what happened even though I was telling the truth, but since the bystander lied, we got banned from the restaurant forever. My boyfriend has a speech problem and a bad foot from a previous surgery, this apparently was grounds to say that my boyfriend was drunk. He was not. Now my ptsd is triggered from past abusive relationships and we are both offended and furious. Even if we weren't banned, we would never support a business that runs the place like an old western dive bar. I will tell my family and friends to avoid this place as well. If they would check the cameras, everything would get cleared up. But we were not heard nor treated with respect so I hope your business closes and NOTHING on this planet can bring me back to...

I used to really LOVE this place, but I am removing my previously given 5 star review.

Service was terrible, they were not busy when we arrived, and we were told to sit anywhere we liked. We found a table and waited at least 10 minutes with no contact from anyone, despite several waitresses waiting on others who came in long after we did. My Girlfriend finally went to the counter and got menus for us. Another 10'ish minutes pass with us looking at a very dissappointingly down sized menu before our waitress finally came and took our drink order. When she was there I asked if they still made the Bacon Mushroom Fettecine. She sort of hemmed and hawed and said well we could maybe make it, but it would be with canned mushrooms. This was no-go! A Itallian place that relies on canned Mushrooms??? I ended up ordering two over priced appetizers which where good, but way overpriced for the quantity of food served. Are you trying to completely run this business directly into the ground or out of business? Why the locals continue to flock here is really beyound comprehension, with the exception of the obvious lack of viable and good Italian dinning options in the Alton area. I may not be a native Altonian anymore, but we do frequent these parts often, and you can rest assured you will not get another cent of...