Serena Pastificio — Restaurant in Atlanta

DO NOT SIGN A CONTRACT WITH THIS DECEPTIVE BUISNESS - We celebrated my wife’s birthday by having dinner here. I reserved the table from 7:30pm-9:30pm. I had to sign a contract with the event manager in order to make the reservation due to the size of our group and pay half of a "minimum spend fee" up front. The agreed upon minimum food and beverage spend fee was $850.

When we arrived for dinner our waitress immediately told us the restaurant closes at 9:00pm and we would need to order all of our food as soon as possible. We felt rushed throughout the entire experience. At the end of our dinner I asked the waitress for my receipt and she told me it would be emailed to me the following day and that we were “all set”. I felt like this meant we met our minimum spend agreement and I didn’t feel like making an issue of it because we were celebrating my wife’s birthday. I just wanted her to have a great night. We finished our food and began to leave at 9:00pm.

The next day my credit card was charged for the meal without me ever seeing the receipt that I had requested. I even checked my email to see that it was still not received. The total cost of the meal was $1,141. I then emailed the event manager to ask for the receipt for a second time. What I received was a deceptive invoice that had large totals instead of listing out individual items purchased. This was clearly an attempt to hide fake charges that were applied to my dinner. I then called her to request my actual receipt that listed individual items purchased. I received it later that day.

When looking over the receipt I found fraudulent charges labeled as FOOD ($231) and WINE ($154) totaling $385. This amount was then inflated by added service fees, taxes and gratuities to a total of $675.64. This includes a beer and wine tax of 8.9% applied to $154 of wine that was never purchased or received.

I called the event manager on Friday March 3rd in order to resolve this issue. She did not answer so I left a voicemail requesting that she return my call. After a few hours had passed without a return call I decided to try again using my wife’s phone. The event manager answered promptly. It’s pretty clear this business was dodging my calls.

I discussed these issues with her and she said she would address them with the general manager of the restaurant and reach back out to me with a solution on Monday March 6th. She has not called me back.

If you look at other 1 star reviews you will see multiple people have had similar issues. This is a recurring problem with this business....

Great experience at Serena Pastificio. We were a bit early for our reservation but were seated immediately anyway. The entire restaurant has great aesthetics. Our server greeted us quickly and got some drinks started for us. They left water on the table and refilled and replaced the bottle consistently and quickly throughout the meal. We each ordered a cocktail and both were great. Complementary warm herbed focaccia came out with the salad course with olive oil to dip in. Both bread and salad were delicioius.

For the main courses I had the Trenette al Pesto and my husband had the Linguine alle Vongole. Both were very good and we could tell the pasta was fresh. My husband commented how generous they were with the clams and that especially his was the pasta he had been "looking for for a long time". Mine was filling and fabulous with whole tender pine nuts, green beans, potatoes, and basil pesto cooked to perfection. We cleaned our plates. We had their signature label wine with our meal and it was good.

We had dessert sharing a Cioccolato Fondente and each having an espresso. The espresso was served with a made in-house melt-in-your-mouth biscotti and highly recommend it to wrap up your dinner even if you aren't doing a full dessert. As expected the dark chocolate of the Cioccolato Fondente went perfectly with our espressos.

I don't let minor mistakes affect my stars at all. There were only a couple. My husband told me when he ordered the ceasar salad he did tell them with the anchoives for me (while I was in the ladies' room) but when it came out it came without; our server offered to remedy the situation immediately. The second was our espressos initially came out decaf and we were VERY glad the food runner said "Decaf, correct?" before putting them on our table. We had the impression that both were assumptions made by one of the staff-- probably people don't usually like the anchoives and most people might not want a caffienated espresso at 8PM, but we did. This didn't affect my rating at all since these things were remedied but I did want to note them since perhaps double-check but don't assume. The staff probably has gotten burned by so many Karens in the past that they are just trying to anticipate and I totally respect that.

Very surprised that this restaurant isn't rated overall 4.8 or so but when people are giving you 1-star reviews because of parking, I understand. I'm glad my coworker recommended it. We will...

I came here before with my husband and fell in love! It was so beautiful and the food was amazing. I’ve always told people about it and I always wanted to go back. After last night, I will not be returning nor will I be recommending. We just felt unwelcomed. The food was ok but definitely overpriced. Our server was good, but service overall was horrible. I finally had the chance to return for my birthday and I made a reservation. My group wasn’t too large (less than 10), but they wouldn’t sit us until everyone was there. That was fine, the last few were parking. But the host and manager were really pressing and warning us that the table will have to be given up if the final 3 arent here in time. Again, we said fine. Once we were all there, we were sat down. There was a huge center piece feaux plant that was blocking us from seeing one another, so we asked if it could be moved. The host said she had to ask the manager. We were a bit confused, but we said ok. When the host did not come back with an update, we simply moved the plant to end of the table (there were two empty chairs at the end so the center piece wasn’t blocking anyone). They came back to the table immediately after we moved it, saying that if we move it or if they take it off the table, they would have to sit two random people at our table which they literally did. I made a reservation, why would you expect I would be ok with two strangers seated at my reserved table? Again, we all looked at each other, but we didn’t say anything and we continued with the evening. I was very confused because there were empty tables around us. I made a reservation, why would you sit strangers at our table? The restaurant was busy. However, there were other tables/options available. They eventually moved the couple and said no one else would be seated at our table. We said thank you and continued with the evening. The check was such a headache but that’s just an Atlanta restaurant for you. Although it was my birthday, they were out of candles which was just funny at that point. We literally had to go to our waiter to get my to go box (we sat there for at least 15 minutes, but she didn’t return). As I said before, I’m not going back it was definitely...