Bella Ciao — Restaurant in Buffalo

EDIT EDIT: After making the last edit, Kevin quickly responded to my email. We're looking forward to giving Bella Ciao another shot! Thank you!! ☺️

EDIT TO ADD: Kevin reached to me the day this review was posted to apologize for the fiasco and to offer me a gift certificate to give them a second chance. His apology seemed sincere and I appreciate the apology, however, I haven't heard anything since. I've even emailed them back twice. Doesn't look good, Kevin, doesn't look good.....

My husband and myself decided to come to here for our anniversary based off of a few recommendations we received from friends with great reviews, specifically for gluten free options. When we arrived, we were greeted and sat right away. We received water right away too. Our waitress came over soon after and took our drink orders. I asked her if they offered any small plates that were both gluten free and vegetarian, she wasn't sure but she said she would go check for me, which I appreciated. She later came back and said we could only get the brussel sprouts, but those have meat in them, so we decided against it. We went with the burrata salad instead. Twenty three minutes after we placed our drink orders, we received them. Twenty three. By this time, we already received and ate our salad, which was delicious by the way. We then placed our food order. I ordered the alfredo, gluten free and my husband ordered the lobster pasta. At the same time, we also ordered another drink. When our food came out, the man who delivered it to us, not our waitress, looked at us and said "I have noodles?", to which I replied "noodles? I ordered gluten free alfredo", he said "yeah, here's your noodles. And for you sir, I have the best dish in the house!" I looked at my "noodles" and I understood right away why he said that, they looked very plain. I did ask for some fresh parmesan, which he did bring to me, before we received our drinks. When our waitress finally decided to come back over, she asked how things were, I told her my pasta was extremely bland and asked if I could get a side of the tomato cream sauce to add to the alfredo. She said sure and that she'll check on our drinks. So now I'm watching my husband eat, because I told him not to wait for me and again, twenty three minutes later, I received my bowl of sauce, which wasn't the right one, but I was starving, so I took it anyways, and our drinks finally came. The restaurant wasn't busy, we know this because we walked by the front on our way in. There wasn't many people at the bar, maybe three. What in the world was going on to where it takes twenty three minutes for drinks and to heat up some pasta sauce? And now, my husband gets to watch me eat, my biggest pet peeve. So while we had very high hopes for this restaurant and my husband LOVED his meal, the service was subpar and the wait for sauce and drinks were unacceptable. The waitress was very kind, but the service was too slow. The table that sat down next to us, after we already received our salad, ordered, ate and paid before I received my pasta sauce and our second round of drinks. Unbelievable. I'm glad everyone else had a better experience. Maybe don't go when...

We are from the Boston area and are accustom to great Italian food as well as great seafood. The bread was over toasted which lead me to believe it was actually stale and toasted, because one piece was hard and charred. Next our meatballs came out cold. The sauce and meatball were cold. Our salads came just several minutes after we started eating apps, which is not how you time dinner . The Caesar salad was textbook Ken’s dressing and bagged croutons. The main dinner was the lobster Malfade. The menu says it’s homemade pasta , but it’s definitely not made there. The lobster was extremely over cooked. The sauce was not flavorful. My daughter’s ziti was over cooked to the point that the pasta was completely flat and had lost its shape. We had 5 wine glasses at the table for our two bottles of wine, no two glasses were the same. My husband had a martini and it was only 1/3 full. Martinis should always be hard not to spill if poured correctly. We chose this restaurant over Tappo because we thought they had more GF options, they didn’t. The spinach artichoke dip had Gluten in it, not sure why. We thought we would be safe with the tortilla chips but they were flour. They do offer gf pasta and pizza crust , so that was fine. The server was so sweet, we shared our story with manager, she was also nice. She comped the items we were not happy with. I shared most but not all concerns because it would have taken up as much time as this review is taking me to write and I didn’t want to do this twice. Also the manager comped us dessert which was very nice of her. Over all I’d say vibe was okay, lights were strangely bright for an Italian dining experience. Almost like phone flashlight weird. If I knew it was in the Embassy hotel I wouldn’t have gone there. Typically not a fan of hotel restaurants and these reasons are why. Again the staff was lovely but the rest was not worth the over $400 dinner AFTER...

First off, we checked in with the hostess for our 7:30 reservation for a party of 4 and advised that we would wait for the rest of our party to arrive and grab a drink at the bar. Once we were ready to be seated (after a drink at the bar), we were advised that “the 8:00 reservations have now arrived and they did not have a table for us”. If that were going to be the case, and I clearly stated I would be at the bar having a drink, wouldn’t it be common sense to come to the bar to notify us that they would be giving our table away prior to doing so?? That was thing 1. Thing 2. We advised our waitress we were not in a hurry so the food could come out whenever and she is free to not place our entree orders until after our appetizers came out. The appetizers were great and we were fine waiting for our entrees to be prepared; however, we were not fine for our entrees to be seemingly sitting around getting cold waiting to be served. It appeared that most of our entrées (all except for 1) were sitting around for a while. The food was lukewarm at best and dried out. Thing 3. We were seating near the bar area (apparently because they gave our table away to an 8:00 reservation). Due to this, we had to hear all of the extremely loud and disruptive commotion at the end of the bar where parties had brought in takeout pizza (?) and were screaming to each other from one side of the bar to the other. Also, at one point, one of the bar patrons decided it was a great for an FaceTime call that consisted of approximately 20 minutes of her screaming at the party on the other line. This was also extremely disruptive and annoying, especially considering we were out for a nice meal at a high-end restaurant. All in all, the taste of the food was good, but we did not enjoy our experience here and likely will not...