Pasghetti's — Restaurant in Branson

I love Italian food as much as anyone and I am always game to try a new, non- chain Italian restaurant. While in Branson, Missouri with the family, I got the opportunity to do exactly that at Pasghetti’s, an Italian eatery.

As you approach Pasghetti’s in your car, you will be greeted with a giant meatball and fork at the entrance. This makes the restaurant impossible to miss and it sets the mood for what is inside. You know that any restaurant with an entrance like that is going to be different and inside, the interesting atmosphere continues to hold your attention. It looks like a city street with storefronts, street names, etc. The soft lighting adds to the atmosphere by making you feel relaxed and calm.

Once you’re ready to order food, you will find that Pasghetti’s has several of the usual food items you expect an Italian restaurant to have, like spaghetti, lasagna, and more. They also serve non- Italian foods such as steak, seafood, and salads but most who dine here will want one of the Italian foods. When I was here most recently, I ordered a plate of appetizers and the meatball sub, served with a side of fries. I found the food pretty good overall, but not exceptional. The other members of our party felt about the same. We liked our food and found it good, but we were not blown away by the pasta food options or appetizers. I’m wondering if the atmosphere was so cool that it drove my expectations for the food to unreasonable levels. Whatever the reason, I still found the food decent overall.

With beverages, Pasghetti’s serves wine, cocktails, beer, and assorted soft drinks. I went with my usual beer, but I noticed that many of the other customers were drinking one of the many mason jar drinks and this was enough to convince my wife to do the same. The price on these mason jar drinks is a little higher than that of other drinks, but they are larger and thus a good deal overall.

I try to avoid chain restaurants when I travel, preferring instead the uncertain and often pleasant surprises that are in store when visiting an independent restaurant for the first time. Pasghetti’s is certainly a memorable place to dine based on atmosphere and few dining establishments in the area can match it’s visual aspects. The food is okay overall, but when combined with the memorable atmosphere, it earns enough points for a recommendation from me and it’s a good family...

Probably one of the best experiences I have had in a tourist town in years. We had a party of 6 with reservations at 6:30 and was honestly expecting to deal with a long wait, unhappy mother, and my kids whining to eat. We were promptly sat at 6:40 even though the restaurant was full and they just waited on a party of 60ish people. To say the team is efficient is an understatement - every single person working was hustling hard but still delivered excellent service. You could tell they had a million things on their mind, yet kept customer service at the forefront. The two servers who assisted us that I’d really like to highlight are below: Laronda was our main server and she was phenomenal. Got our orders in promptly, drinks were never empty long, and food was correct. She still took the time to chat with us about our vacation and life in Branson even though you could see how busy it was. She was so personable and warm if you were upset about a wait, you wouldn’t be for long after. Jenny was another server who came to help Laronda bring food and they accidentally brought an additional entree that wasn’t ours. My six year old got excited when she saw the shrimp and began putting her fingers into the pasta which we immediately corrected because we knew this was someone else’s meal. Jenny stopped us and then began to fish all the shrimp out of the pasta and said, “I’m a momma, babies will eat with me”! She even joked to her and said “baby you want this?” When she noticed she was eating it up 🤣 My daughter said no but my god, we live in a large metro area and you’d NEVER find service like this anywhere. I was blown away.

All of that said, the food was good. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, it was solid Italian and it was honestly lukewarm when it came out probably bc of how busy it was. However, the service was truly so amazing that I didn’t even care about it. Plus it tasted good cold. So truthfully had we gotten it warm the food would’ve been 5 stars over 4 stars. My girls asked if we can come back every year that we visit and I answered with an emphatic YES. Pasghettis, yall have some GREAT people working, I hope you are paying them well or spoiling them when...

Definitely a no from us. The floors and tables were sticky. The staff was chaotic and disorganized. We were seated at a table that was way too small for our party and had to move to another table on our own because we couldn’t get any of the staff’s attention.

Then the staff seemed to be fighting over who was assigned to which tables and three more parties were seated and two given their food before anyone even came over to get our drink order.

The table leaned so far that it was comical, when we looked under the leg we noticed there had been several attempts to right the crooked table with wads of paper towel so we added a few more layers to try to get it to sit right.

We finally ordered our food and waited quite a while. Then they brought an extra kids meal, the wrong side for one plate, and the entirely wrong dish for someone else in our party. When we tried to correct them that it was supposed to be chicken primavera, not parmigiana they said that was the correct dish and seemed confused until they finally took it away and said they would get the correct dish out. Everyone else was finished with their meal before the second attempt at the dish was brought out at which time shrimp primavera was delivered. Again, we said this was not the order, it was meant to be CHICKEN primavera. They took it away again and returned after a while with the correct dish, but missing the breadstick that all other meals came with. The kicker, when the check was brought out, we were charged for the more expensive meal that we didn’t order and was sent back as well as the additional kids meal we didn’t order and was also sent back.

There’s a serious issue with both the kitchen and wait staff and that combined with the dingy atmosphere and mediocre food made the experience awful. The entire dining room had been seated, served, paid and left by the time the issues with our meals and check were resolved.

If looking for an upgrade from this experience, I would highly recommend finding a lovely Waffle House, Chuck E. Cheese, or even Walgreens...