Buon Appetito Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Cape Coral

Food is okay, but as many other customers have pointed out in the past, the owners, and Denise in particular, are extremely rude. Last night, my daughter and I decided to give Buon Appetito a try. We ordered two calzoni without knowing that they came with ricotta. My daughter does not like ricotta, so she returned her food. Denise intervened and instead of making my daughter at ease she insisted that the menu explicates the basic filling of the calzone. This is not true. The menu just says "cheese calzone," and we assumed that 'cheese' meant 'mozzarella cheese.' Rude #1: By mentioning the menu, Denise suggested that WE made the mistake of ordering the wrong food. We asked to have the same calzone without ricotta, but Rude #2 she said "No, because it would look flat!" What does aesthetics here have to do with my a customer's individual taste? Rude #3 Looking my daughter askance (really, where do you come from RUDE owner?), Denise asked, "Okay what you want then?" As you can anticipate, I didn't like her attitude and I asked to talk to the other owner - the husband, apparently. He somehow apologized and Rude #4 added that his wife had a long day, suggesting then that customers should be kind to her. At the end, Rude #5 instead of charging us for teh individual pizza that my daughter ended up ordering, the owners managed to bill us indiscriminately for the calzone (a bit more expensive). Now, a note on the ambiance: walls covered with pictures of scenes from the movie The Godfather, and the TV series The Sopranos. As if that was not enough, the owners also managed to decorate the walls with fake guns. Very distasteful, indeed. For many years, Italian Americans are trying to debunk the 'mafioso' stereotype with which they are constantly portrayed in cultural artifacts. Buon Appetito is simply reinforcing that stereotype. From an aesthetic point of view, the ambience of the restaurant is a total failure. Also, out of respect of the many mass shootings occurred in Florida recently, Buon Appetito's allusion to gun violence is simply outrageous. Clearly, we will not go back.

UPDATE: Owner, you are incorrect. Ricotta (and not 'riccotta,' as you wrote it) is not necessarily the main cheese in a calzone. You made it such because you chose to adopt a specific culinary style. This should be always specified on the menu. Enough of this now; I dedicated too much of my time to...

This place deserves a no star. We went there one night recently and were turned away at the door after asking how many people were in our party. They told us they were too backed up in orders to seat people even though they were still taking take-out orders. No one even asked us if were were willing to wait. Sadly, the family that walked in not even 2 minutes before us was sat with no problems. Bothered by this, I asked to see a manager. The staff told me the manager was cooking due to an employee walking out without placing orders. I was in awe that he told me this much. I waited for the manager. When she came, she was immediately short with me. When she asked what was wrong, she slammed her hand on the podium and said "he is young and inexperienced so I will fire him." Flabbergasted, I said "oh, no please don't do that. I was just wanted you to know what happened because I thought you would want to know and maybe next time someone could offer your customers and option in the matter." She said, "Oh, good because I wasn't really gonna fire him". She then said, "if that's not what you wanted, then tell me how I can make you happy." I proceed to tell her that I had been waiting a long time to come there and was so upset at how she was treating me and about being turned away. She told me that she "had too much to worry about because she had a cook cut himself and she was having to cook now to catch up." I told her what they had said to me about the worker leaving. She told me that this was not true but demanded again of me to tell her what I wanted her to do about what had transpired. I then asked for the owner. She informed me that she was the owner and that she would like us to return another time for their "great atmosphere, food and music." I honestly was so upset I told her that we would NEVER be back and I would be sure to let everyone know the terrible experience we had. No matter how bad your night is, you never treat customers the way we were...

This is a difficult review for me to write, because my husband and I have had good experiences at this restaurant. I even wrote a positive review earlier this year. However, our experience tonight with our daughters and mother was very disappointing.  Although we had a reservation, we waited for 40 minutes after seating before anyone offered us anything, including water. We had to ask  the busers and other waitresses to bring us the bare necessities. Our waiter (who is apparently their most experienced waiter … of 1 year) complained about his other customers to us. One of the other waitresses asked if we would speak with the owner about our unpleasant experience, which I did. That is the reason I am writing this review. Otherwise, I would have just dismissed this as one bad experience. Instead of really listening and/or attempting to make things right, she offered half-hearted excuses. For instance, when we told her that it took 40 minutes for us to be offered even water, her response was “we don’t typically offer our customers water.” In addition, after a lengthy discussion, I concluded by saying there is room for improvement, and her response was “that’s not going to happen.“ There are plenty of restaurants in the Cape and Fort Myers that offer excellent food and excellent service. I am more than willing to overlook one bad experience, but the owner’s shockingly dismissive response to our comments was the tipping point for me. We are highly unlikely to return. — at Buon Appetito...