Gaetano's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in California

Not a family friendly environment. I'll never even look in the direction of this place again. This location gave us one of the most Discriminating Horrific experiences I've ever had in my life. The food is absolutely delicious, homemade authentic Italian, and the only thread of dignity they have left. There are two older women that serve here, hopefully not for long after this eye opening post. I can't even call them ladies, these excuse for "women", were entirely rude and don't belong in exquisite dining or customer service, and for their "matured" age, they definitely should've know better than to treat a lady with such disrespect and discrimination. I was so excited to come back this second time given the exceptional grand visit we had the first time here, when the gentleman Eric served us the greatest experience, leaving us craving to return!! He made us feel like we were in Italy and absolutely cared for! We left delightfully that first time saying, "this was by far an extraordinary meal and amazing customer service with some of the best Italian food and just can't wait to return"!! Our second time back, regarding this current review, was about a month later. We sat down knowing exactly the dish we wanted to order, the famous well-portioned, Lasagna!! My fiance ordered himself some wine, and I ordered a glass of water. These "women", who are old enough to be retired with too much make-up and bad hair-dye in denial to accept the reality of their age, absolutely refused to serve me a simple glass of Water. First of all, I didn't order the wine, my fiance did for himself. Second of all, little did these grumps know, I wasn't even drinking any alcohol because we literally just had a heartbreaking loss due to my fertility challenges being the aging lady that I am. The last thing I wanted was wine or any alcohol for that matter. All I wanted, was a glass of water and the delicious lasagna special posted in my video above. The first haggard looking woman looked at me up and down with burning judgment and treated me as if I were a child - I'm 37 years old, an RN working in trauma literally saving lives, and a professional grad student studying for my doctorate degree. Not only did this woman refuse to bring out my glass of water after demeaningly demanding my ID that I said was left in the car, I made it very clear and politely told her, I specifically only wanted a glass of water. She then made me wait over 15 minutes and sent out this even more haggard looking back-up buddy, who Also refused to give me a simple glass of water, demanding my ID again while she discriminated against me looking me up and down like she was jealous and in disbelief of my natural youth. I may look young, but I definitely don't look underage. Normally, I would take someone asking for my ID as a compliment, but this was blatant disrespect. Once my fiance stepped back inside from his phone call, I told him what happened and we quickly and quietly walked out vowing never to return. I don't care how good and authentic the food is, we'll never be back. They added insult to my injury and clearly, do not support the historical family values that both Son's of Gaetanos pride themselves on. I will only ever go to the Lakeside location where Maria and her husband run a tip-top fine establishment and treat everyone with courtesy kindness and respect...they serve the same menu with the same exceptional quality food, even better than the brother store located in La Mesa. This is such ashame. I have over 7 Million views on my Google reviews, in the top 10% of restaurant reviewers, and very loyal to my trusted establishments. This traumatizing experience is a complete disgrace to the Gaetanos family name. I strongly recommend reconsidering allowing such ignorant employees to continue working for this location, they're not even part of the family, clearly, because if they were, I honestly don't feel I would've been treated with such disgusting disrespect. I'll definitely be sharing this horrible experience with Aldo Sr., Junior, and Maria,...

I'm on the fence about this place. The food is absolutely incredible. The fresh baked bread was phenomenal! We shared 4 loafs The pizza is very good. I don't say this lightly since I am from Boston and believe that New York style pizza is the best so it takes a lot for me to like west coast pizza. The Italian dressing was very nice. I had shells stuffed with ricotta, seasoned ground beef and spinach. There was so much cheese I almost cried because that's my favorite part! It was amazing!!! My friend had angel hair pasta with diced tomatoes, garlic and basil. It was magnificant! Finally, we split a cannoli and were sad because there just wasn't enough for 2. So, obviously, we loved the food. The problem is that they are rigid when it come to certain things. My bff is a vegetarian. She went to get something to go. She asked for the chicken marsala w/ the chicken on the side so she could give it to her cat. The woman proceeded to berate her and yelled that they were too busy to do that. I asked about a dish that had mussels, clams, scallops and shrimp. I don't like mussels at all so I asked if I could leave them out and put in extra shrimp or something. The server said that the owners don't allow them to do that. This, I thought was completely ridiculous. The server was wonderful. Very bubbly and knowledgeable. So,the food was a 5. The service by the waiter was a 5. However, the flexibility of the owners left a lot to be desired. It was a 1. I will still go there because the food is...

The good: the front of house people there just could not have been nicer.

The not so good: the food. The salad was reasonably priced; until it arrived. Literally 6 leaves of iceberg lettuce, 1 slice of tomato, 2 small olives and a sport pepper. The side of dressing that is usually barely adequate made this salad over-dressed. The veal parm tasted like it was bought ready to cook. Waaay to thin. It was baked instead of fried, but that was another issue. Part of it was done, part of it was burnt. They tried to hide it with the cheese, but it wouldn't stick. The spaghetti noodles were okay, but the sauce was bland. The sauce wouldn't stick to the noodles. They bake their own bread. The crust is very chewy and the bread is very holey. They pre-cut it halfway through but the crust is so tough that you end up smashing the bread trying to tear off a hunk. Not a normal Italian style bread. It tasted pretty good, but it wasn't much use for sopping up sauce.

The bottom line: I really wanted to like this place, but as of now this is a "you should probably want to try a...