Savinos — Restaurant in Belmont

To start, I typically give a 5 to Savinos but more on the 4 farther down. The food is always excellent at Savinos. My 7 year old grandson had the Duck Confit and lived it! My tuna and scallops were perfectly prepared. The others in our party had beef - 1 was a filet special of the evening and both said their meals were excellent. We had the mussel appetizer and the crab appetizer. I am not a mussel fan but the others raved about them (I think my grandson ate 1/2 the bowl !). Then we all had dessert - flan, to sorbet, to blueberry torte to the multiple layer chocolate fudge cake - all deemed delicious! So why 4 stars? The service from our supposed waitress (or should I say non-service). At 1st all was fine but then came the drink order - she didn't understand it (a bottle of champagne for the 2 adults and a Shirley Temple for the 7 year old- when I ordered the bottle, she wrote it down and then asked my husband what he wanted?). The bartender came over got the order because he said she was confused (although he as well was confused by the Shirley Temple- turns out he had never made one before, but the 7 year old wound up saying they were the best he ever had - it was all in their special cherries!) The poor man also wound up having to take our appetizer order as the waitress basically ignored us for over 30 minutes and never came back to ask- to give credit, he was deeply apologetic she hadn't taken our order as we had been sitting for quite awhile. The kitchen brings out your food when it is ready which is amazing so it is always hot! Waitress did take our 2nd drink order, but never put it in! The bartender caught our glances, came to see if food was okay, and we mentioned missing drinks..... So what did this waitress do? Not much as the bar tender was also the one who took our dessert order and took care of the leftover packaging for us. Again, not a typical service experience for Savinos - but kudos to the bartender for taking care of us and to the kitchen for an...

I always read over the yelp reviews fairly carefully to get help in deciding what to order and was disappointed to see how many negative reviews there were. I have been to Savino’s maybe 2 or 3 times a year for many years and I’m always quite pleased and very satisfied with both the service and the food. I’m also impressed that whenever I’ve asked for something to be done a little differently or for a substitute it’s been done gracefully and without an extra charge. For example I love their mushroom risotto (I asked for some extra garlic and Parmesan cheese) and so I usually order that instead of potatoes or regular rice, and it makes the meal really outstanding for me. My friend and I both had the vegetable mushroom soup which was delicious and I had the panko topped tilapia which I thought was excellent. Not at all greasy and very tender and tasty.

I only have two small recommendations : one, that the water be colder and include some ice (this was not a problem since I asked for a glass of ice and got it quickly) and two that there be some salt & pepper on the table even though the food is usually nicely seasoned. The restaurant was quiet, which is also a plus and when I did hear the music, it was very pleasant and calming music

I suggest that you...

Food was excellent but the dining experience was spoiled by a party of 16-20 incredibly loud people celebrating a birthday (they sang a drunken version of Happy Birthday) who acted as if they were the only ones in the restaurant. If you are making a reservation, make sure the restaurant doesn't have a large group already scheduled. The group that was there when we were was so loud that our table of 6 had trouble hearing the waitress describe the specials. We couldn't have conversation at our table because we couldn't hear one another over them. They seemed to be in a contest to see who in their drunken party could yell the loudest. (I heard one guy shout, "I'm a Silver Bullet man myself.") It did not appear as if anyone on the wait staff ever approached the table and asked them to lower their voices out of respect for other diners. And apparently they continued to be served alcohol when they were very clearly drunk. Meanwhile, there were only 3 wait staff people working the whole restaurant, plus a bar tender. This meant we had long waits between every segment of our dinner. In all, not a...