Scornovacca's Altoona — Restaurant in Altoona

We stopped here for the first time on a Friday night, probably between 7 and 8 PM. One of the waiters politely explained it would be a moment before we could be seated, while they cleaned a few tables. No problem. My boyfriend asked if we could have a booth and was told yes. A few minutes later another waiter asked if we could do a tall top table. Just wanting to sit down and get closer to eating, we agreed, even though there was still an available booth that could have been cleaned off. I have a bit of a disability, and walk with a cane some of the time. Climbing up onto tall chairs is difficult sometimes, but we did not explain that. As soon as we were seated the tall table next to us was occupied by 4 more new comers. They sat down and a waiter immediately came to take their beverage orders. A few minutes later the same waiter brought their beverages, and took their food order. We were still sitting there waiting for a glass of water or anything. Finally a very polite young man came to take our order. I assume they had been very busy before our arrival as he seemed a bit frazzled, but he was trying. We ordered a combo appetizer plate, I ordered the spaghetti supreme w/ red sauce and mozzarella and Root Beer. My boyfriend ordered a medium beef and mushroom pizza, a salad, a bottle of beer, and a glass of water for each of us, asking that the water be brought with our food. The appetizer came, with my Root Beer. No beer. When the waiter passed I asked for the beer and water. He apologetically brought them. The people next to us, who arrived after us, received their food. Our appetizer arrived, about 5 minutes before the salad food and water. That's fine. We're forgiving people and understand things sometimes get out of sync on a busy night.. But then we tasted the food.

I gave the restaurant a 3 simply because all of the employees seemed very polite and helpful, and the restaurant seemed clean and cozy. I gave the food a 1 because there's no zero rating.

The food was horrible. That was the worst spaghetti I've ever eaten. Italian food is usually very flavorful. Sometimes too much so, with all the oregano, garlic, etc. This had NO FLAVOR AT ALL. Apparently the pizza was the same. My boyfriend took one bite and said he was done. The appetizer combo consisted of 2 cheese sticks, approx 6 onion rings, 4 mushrooms, and about a dozen cauliflower.. I suppose that's ok if you really like cauliflower. I asked the waiter for boxes, and he brought them, followed by our check. He was busy taking other orders, etc at another table, and we were wanting to pay and leave. A young woman who also worked there was sitting at the bar near the register. I walked up and asked if I could go ahead and pay, since our waiter was busy. She said she couldn't ring us up because she doesn't know his number. A couple minutes later the other waiter (not ours) picked up the card, and brought back the receipt to sign. This was nearly a $60 meal for 2 people.

As we were leaving we encountered friends of my boyfriend's. He asked them what they thought if the food. The man told us he didn't think they would probably be back. So, it wasnt just us.

We won't likely be returning to Scornavaccas in Altoona. We have both eaten at Scornavaccas in other locations and other cities. It was always good. The food we received in Altoona was nothing like the others. Save your money and go to...

Went for a quick lunch for my birthday with my husband and before I go on please know that I grew up on the Southside of DSM and man was I disappointed in the lack of quality and freshness of the food at this location. The server was obviously working front and back of the house on her own. I ordered cheese bread for an appetizer, Italian Sausage Sandwich and my husband ordered the Big V Salad which was no Big D on any level basic and the meat tasted funky. Onion rings were ok, cheese bread, well, more like cheese baked on a hot dog bun, with sub par sauce, no roasted peppers on my sandwich maybe a teaspoon of sauce on the bun and the meat on my sandwich also tasted well…off. If not old. So I did not eat mine after a bite into the cappacola. The place was freeezing so we ate with our coats ON. My husband is diabetic and ordered iced tea, asked for sugar substitute and was told that they did not have any? Yet the tea was unsweetened? Needless to say my birthday lunch was a complete bust and now we are hoping the meat we ate will not come back to haunt us tomorrow when I celebrate with the rest of my family. Seriously? You guys KNOW better, been going to eat there since I can remember and never once had this bad of an experience with food quality! Not even sure I want to hit the one on the Southside after this. I really just felt bad for my husband shelling out $50 for a salad, appetizer and sandwich that tasted awful. If I could give zero stars I would but the girl working was doing her best and was a decent server considering she was obviously working FOH and BOH. Ugh. Man I hated posting this...

This was our first time dining here, and unfortunately, it will also be our last. I don’t enjoy writing negative reviews, so I’ll start with the positives. The onion rings were excellent, and the pizza and fried mushrooms were decent. Pricing was fair—about what you’d expect from a pizza/Italian restaurant. Our server was friendly, though not very attentive.

On the downside, the marinara sauce (served with the mushrooms) wasn’t for me. It had a strong anise flavor—if you enjoy black licorice, you’d probably love it, but I don’t. The wait for our pizza was also long—about 30 minutes for a simple cheese pizza. I later noticed a large takeout order of about 10 pizzas, so I’ll give the benefit of the doubt that the kitchen was busy, though there were only three families dining in. Unfortunately, we ordered a cheese pizza but received pepperoni. We didn’t complain, since we didn’t want to wait another half hour for a replacement.

The atmosphere left a lot to be desired. Booth upholstery was coming undone in several places, and the wall decor showing the restaurant’s opening year (“1973”) is missing the “3.” When we sat down, there was trash under our table. The TVs around the dining room weren’t being used well—only one showed football on a Saturday afternoon, while another was set to Fox News.

Finally, when we were ready to leave, I had to go find our server to request a to-go box and the check, as she was in the back most of the time.

All in all, despite a couple bright spots with the food, the overall experience was...