Florentine Cafe — Restaurant in Boston

The most traumatic experience I have ever gone through. This restaurant should be closed permanently, there was a pill of unknown origin in our bruschetta. This restaurant has permanently ruined eating at a restaurant for me and caused extreme anxiety and distress and now I will forever have to worry about whether there is some sort of drug in my food or not. My boyfriend and I came to Florentine cafe in the North End for dinner and drinks on Saturday June 1st. We each got a drink and put in an order of the bruschetta to share, once the bruschetta arrived we began eating it only to notice a small circular orange pill sitting on the piece of bread that was hiding beneath all of the diced tomatoes, immediately we began to freak out realizing that we may have ingested some sort of drug. We brought this to the bartender’s attention and he quickly took the plate away from us to try and cover up the fact that the people working in the kitchen are popping pills while making food that is being served to customers. I am in utter shock that something like this could even happen in a restaurant. We asked the worker what kind of pill it was because we were so concerned about our health and have no clue what drug it was, the bartender then tried lying to us and saying it was a mint while he brought us out a new order of bruschetta which we quickly declined stating we want nothing from a restaurant that has drugs being thrown around the kitchen. I told my whole family who all became enraged by this news, my dad called the restaurant to which the manager admitted he knew he was going to get a phone call about this and that he has no idea how a pill got into our food, the manager tried telling my dad it was an advil but it was not. Advil says advil on the pill and this pill did not say that. What was supposed to be a fun night out resulted in having to leave and go home and make phone calls to the police and the hospital while also monitoring ourselves to see if we would have any adverse reactions to whatever drug was put into our food. Save yourself the utter panic and shock of worrying about whether your food has been drugged by someone in the kitchen and go literally anywhere else. This place has violated any and all health regulations and should be shut...

To comment on someone else’s comment, they did NOT serve bread with our food. Was really looking forward to it with our meal. We had to end up ordering garlic bread because no bread came out. Cute restaurant though. The hostess graciously sat us further in the restaurant as we did not want to sit right next to her podium and the front door. We sat at a two top all the way back, basically next to the kitchen, which wasn’t a problem. The only thing that we wish would have been different was our server’s service. He was young and nice but didn’t check on us at all after he took our order. After about 30-35 min, we were gonna order another round of drinks but decided against it because our server never came around until the other staff cleared our table. He was prioritizing his bigger tables of 4+ people. He must have stopped at their tables 5+ times, while us only 1 time toward the end of the meal. I had the short ribs and my SO had the filet and lobster. Both were delicious! The food was so good. Maybe a little overpriced, but it was delicious nonetheless. Again, the only issue was the server. He should have been more attentive to our table just as much as he was to his others. We had to signal for him to bring the check. I would go back if in Boston again, but would probably avoid this guy’s section or just sit at the bar. Also it got super HOT in there, as it is tightly packed in the back of the small restaurant. Again, totally fine, just worth noting if you sweat easily. EDIT TO ADD: the bathrooms were very tight and small, toilet paper strewn about, not a very nice bathroom for such...

I rarely leave reviews for anything but this place really put a bad taste in my mouth Friday night. As many other reviews on here say, the service is utterly atrocious. The hostess was the only shining light in the entire establishment, she went out of her way to be nice to me and my girlfriend and quickly found us a seat at the bar with a smile on her face the entire time. After that it was all down hill. We sat at the bar for at least 15 minutes before anyone even made eye contact with us. I would be understanding if the bartenders were actively making drinks for other customers, but they weren’t. It was as if we did not exist to them. I was beginning to think we somehow did something wrong and they were punishing us. Finally we had to literally stop a bartender and ask them nicely if they could please make us a drink to which the bartender had an attitude as if we were asking her to do something that doesn’t fall directly under the title of her position. And to top it all off they gave us drinks that I’m almost certain had no alcohol in them. We sucked down our soda waters and tonic waters and left without leaving a penny for a tip. Do not go to this place if you want to be treated with the most basic of basic service and not treated like an inconvenience for literally doing what you do when you go to a bar. Simply...