L'Italiano Restaurant — Restaurant in Bossier City

First, I want to start off by saying that I will NEVER return to this restaurant. Is was a surprise dinner for my birthday and there were 12 of us that went. The first impression when we walked in was a condescending stare of a couple of guests by, whoever the man was at the front. Apparently, some peoples' dress did not warrant his approval. We were seated and after ordering from the extremely limited selection of beers one couple from our group ordered the cooked zucchini. The waiter returned after awhile and blatantly lied saying, "there was an issue with cutting the right thickness and it wasn't cooking evenly so we won't be able to give you zucchini." They claim to be a high-class restaurant and the chef can't cut the zucchini correctly? not to mention they probably use a slicer for it. Obviously that was a lie and they were just out of zucchini and didn't want to say it. It took us over an hour and a half to get our food! And the place wasn't THAT busy. That was already frustrating in itself but they forgot to make one of the people's dish so 11 people have food and the last one had to wait an extra 20 minutes to get hers. The food itself was OK at best. Not worth the ridiculous price we paid for sure! After we finally everyone asked if there would be some sort of discount because we waited so long for food. After talking to the manager the waiter finally came back and said they would do a discount, of which we didn't see at all. I understand that when you have a party over 6 people they will add on gratuity. It makes sense, most places do that. BUT, to top off the already disappointing meal, we received our checks and gave cards to pay, when the receipts came back to sign they were already filled out! They literally wrote in the tip and total portion with their own idea of what we should tip them! Not only that, they took it upon themselves to tack on a 22% tip! My wife and I were very frustrated already at the whole situation. She tried to plan a very nice birthday meal for me out and it turned into a nightmare. We crossed the tip out and put the total, which again, was VERY ridiculous for 2 beers, 1 glass of wine, and 2 entrees. Usually, when we spend 3 digits on meal and a couple of drinks I should have a good buzz and be full when I leave. Yeah, not this place. We crossed out the amount they decided they would give themselves because, well, the service and the experience wasn't worth it and filling out the receipt for us was the final straw. Looking at the credit card statement, they still charged us what they "THOUGHT" they...

We tried this restaurant on a Thursday evening. Looks nice on the outside and as you walk in you will see a the dining area on the right, and some guy playing Magic the Gathering ccg on the left. As we sat in the very back of what felt like a cramped dining space, we were greeted by our waiter fairly quickly. I inquired about their beer selection, they only had two; I think Coors & Michelob Ultra. The wine was about $8 a glass. So I ended up oredering a Dr. Pepper, which came out in a glass & in a small bottle that it came in; I'd take this over fountain drinks any day. Our waiter was great, very attentive even though he was sweating like he was running a marathon. Our bread was fresh and delicious. My wife had ordered some smoked salmon as an appetizer, that ended up coming out after our entrées. But she enjoyed the salmon. Her entrée was shrimp on top of spinach, this dish was pretty good. I ordered cheese stuffed tortellini with a tomato based meat sauce. The meat sauce was good but the tortellini was bland, I forgot they were suppose to be stuffed with cheese as it was flavorless. A friend of mine had ordered their special, which was some fish with a side of spaghetti. He enjoyed the fish but when he got his small side of spaghetti to go he added some meat sauce to it. The amount of sauce is probably barely one large spoon since it was such a small serving of spaghetti & he was charged $6. I had a large plate of tortellini with far more meat sauce & was charged the $6, you would think there would be a price difference. The atmosphere was nice, the waiter was good, the food was a hit or miss on somethings, a bit overpriced, imo, but the place maybe worth another visit for a different...

After reading the reviews, I was really excited about this place. We're always looking for the best place when we visit from out of town and we wanted to take our good friends out to eat somewhere nice. I cannot fathom how anyone could genuinely give this place 5 stars. From the outside it looks like a hole in the wall. The inside is not much better. When we walked in at first, it looked nice, very intimate and romantic, but it was extremely loud, we could not hear each other. Then we noticed the "graffiti" on the walls, which is supposed to be some gimmick where people can write on, it is not pleasing to look at. The host didn't really acknowledge that we should follow him or even say hello. The menus have lots of spelling errors, need to be cleaned and covers replaced. Our waiter did not tell us the specials and seemed annoyed when we requested a substitute. The food was not very good. My pollo milanese came in a plate full of oil? Or some watery sauce that wasn't good at all and had the thinist slice of chicken breast I have ever seen. There was no presentation. I got a side of luke warm noodles and the bread tasted like it had been in a dirty refrigerator. They also had a microwave in their dirty kitchen (which makes me think a lot of the food is not fresh) and dishes stacked in huge piles in front of the kitchen. The woman's bathroom had pee all over the seat, tissue and paper towels on the floor and smelled horrible. I was up at 3 AM because I was horribly sick to my stomach. If I had seen the kitchen beforehand, I would not have eaten here. Don't get me started on how painfully expensive it is for...