Anna's Pizzeria — Restaurant in Apex

Maybe it was just bad timing (it was 9pm on a Friday night), I let my daughter's choose a new resturaunt to grab (late) dinner. We had a family emergency this day, and once I picked them up from school we spent the remainder of evening at the hospital, so we were exhausted and hungry. I've worked service, from hostess to waitress and even kitchen and bartending. I know the face of annoyance when a party walks in at the end of dinner rush, I know the looks the servers give the hostess trying to steer them from sitting their section, and I get it. The server was not very friendly, barely smiled and seemed rushed to get us in and out. We ordered and the food came pretty quickly, and that's probably the only positive thing I have to say.🤷‍♀️ I ordered Chicken Marsala, the ceasar salad topped the Chicken Marsala😑. I've had this dish at various restaurants, from chains to locally owned-- and of all I have ever tried, Anna's ranked lowest, very bland and boring. My oldest is a "picky eater" and, of course, ordered chicken tenders. I ordered an extra pizza to have for lunch the next day, which she ended up eating because the chicken tenders had soft spots (yes 😶 shes that picky). The chicken tenders were left to throw away. I didn't say anything about them, yet I wasnt asked about them either. My youngest ordered Baked Ziti, which she loved. By the end of our dining the check came quickly (no surprise there) and luckily for the server, mostly due to compassion for this industry after working in it, I left a generous tip that did not reflect her service skills or my experience, yet one that hopefully opened her eyes to be generous and kind to late night arrivals set in her section---because after the evening we had, a little positivity would have been nice.

I overheard her boasting to the other servers that "hey! They left me a GOOD one! Ha!", which makes me curious if they all believed it would not be. I get it, trust me I do, but in a world where every dollar earned takes a lot of effort and hardwork, most would want to spend their money on decent service, a little smile...

I’ve had a number of enjoyable meals at Anna’s Pizzeria in Apex…until tonight. I was sitting upstairs and having a pleasant meal with 4 good friends , one of which was celebrating her first day of retirement. We had just paid our check (of $150) at 10:00pm, when clearly the work staff started pressing for us to leave. They dimmed and brightened the lights, started banging around more loudly, etc. I told our table I’d be right back, and headed towards the door to the restroom. There was a mop bucket blocking the door, and when I was stepping around the bucket, one of the wait staff cut me off and started to push by me from the other direction. I said, “pardon me”, and as he brushed by me he said “pardon you”. I halted, called him out, and said, "I'm sorry, did you just say, "pardon you" to me?". He just looked at me in a surly fashion and continued to walk away. I turned around and followed him, and said again, "did you just say, "pardon you" to me?" Still no answer. I told him how rude, and asked him for his name, which he would not provide. He didn’t deny what he said, or that he’d been rude. I had to obtain his name from the people behind the serving area, I told them that the management would hear about my incident with him, and that they've lost me as a customer. My friends also engaged the manager to inform her of the incident. By that time, I was disgusted, was done, and heading downstairs to the exit. The manager informed my friends that she would waive the tip we’d paid. Anna’s needs to review the incident with their staff to reiterate the importance of treating customers well, and ensuring they have a good experience. Still, Anna’s doesn’t need to worry about me again since I won’t be...

If zero stars was an option, that it was Anna's in Downtown Apex would get. I am disappointed in the way we were treated on the evening of July 30, 2021. What should have been an easy fix to a minor error was met with hostility and an embarrassing display of character from the manager. We placed a phone order for 2 pizzas. When we got home we realized one of the pizzas was missing the topping (given a cheese instead of pepperoni). We went back to Anna's to get this resolved. Because the person taking the phone order rang it in as a cheese pizza, the manager didn't want to correct the order. When he finally agreed to put pepperoni on it, he just tossed it on the pizza and gave it back to us. Putting the pizza back in the oven to cook was too much for him. We said that wasn't acceptable, so he grudgingly took the pizza back to cook for 5 min. It wasn't cooked---came back to us the same way....luke warm with uncooked pepperoni. After a 2nd request to cook the pizza--- they decided to make a new one. Half of our meal is at home--now cold--while we wait for them to unnecessarily cook another pizza for us. The pizza we received resembled the attitude we got from the manager---cheese was spewed all over, so significant portions of the pizza were dough and sauce, there were maybe 10 pepperonis on the pizza, and the cutting left us with numerous razor thin slices This was a minor error that simply required this response from that manager - "I'm sorry about that. Let me take care of that now." Take the pizza, put pepperoni on it, COOK it, and give it back. That is not what we got from this establishment. We eat pizza every Friday night, but we will never...