Trattoria Ciao — Restaurant in Cape Coral

Waited 40 minutes (it's a small place and the seating was limited) to get pizza and they "ran out" of pizza dough on a Wednesday night!! And Yes, we did in fact wait 40 minutes. We waited around 10 minutes for someone to greet us. No one ever did. I ended up interrupting a kid who appeared stressed out. His reply was "umm, sorry I'm just a server and I don't know what I'm doing. Let me get someone who does." We waited 10-15 minute to put our name on the magical list the owner describes. Try employing a hostess. Having more than 1-2 kids on staff might be more efficient. While we were there, several other people left and were annoyed as well. I actually tried convincing a lady to stay because I read some reviews explaining the place was alright, but her and her husband left in disgust. Once on the list, we waited an additional 20 minutes. So happy we got that clarified. When I walked in the place, hardly anyone was even eating pizza, but other dishes offered on the menu. I've never been to an Italian restaurant in my life that runs of out of pizza dough. Born in New York and raised in an Italian town in the suburbs of NYC to shed some light on my experiences and perspective for the readers. The owners response is "we make fresh pizza dough and sometimes we run out of things." My response is, if you had proper planning you wouldn't be unprepared. With owning a restaurant you're not cooking for your family, you're cooking for a community. I think you guys have to get a better management system and increase your stock of items. Running out of pizza dough at a place that advertises themselves as a pizza place is like showing up to a winery that runs out of wine. Where I’m from, the high end restaurants are CIA trained, use local, and fresh ingredients. They don’t use boxed or freezer items. Having close friends (owners, restaurant mangers, CIA trained chefs) in the restaurant business, I have an idea how a restaurant should be run. So let’s not use that as an excuse. Also, after reading other reviews, I've yet to see a response from the restaurant taking blame or planning to improve their services based on their responses to other customer's reviews. I'm also not anticipating any progression to improvement since the owner has not made use of constructive criticism from other reviews, but points the finger at the customers telling them that they are in the wrong. And your response is what I expected, arrogant. You never even apologized for running out of dough and did not seem concerned they we were leaving. And yes, my dad was upset because we were waiting awhile, finally seated to find out you ran out of your dough, hungry, and wanted pizza, but was disappointed by YOUR poorly ran restaurant. Hope you're attitude doesn't get the best of your business. Stay away from this place. Who wants to support a restaurant when the owner doesn't care about the customers. Her small ego is what the concern...

My partner and I have been sober since July 2020, and since vodka penne pasta is merely cooked with vodka and not actually containing pure vodka in it, we like to treat ourselves to the dish when possible. Unfortunately tonight, the vodka penne pasta brought to our table was not cooked through, a mistake that my partner (an experienced cook) knew immediately was due to careless negligence. They went back and cooked the pasta properly, but I was triggered by the incident and experienced cravings and wept throughout my dinner. I spoke with the chef to plead with her that she be more careful in the future, since you never know who could sit down at your table, but she did not seem to understand. There was just no compassion at all in the response.

(As a response to the owner in the comments below, I find it surprising that they don't even know how this dish works. There is no alcohol in vodka pasta. It is simply MADE with vodka when cooking, and the vodka evaporates, it's gone by the time it is prepared. So the peanut allergy analogy does not apply to this at all. A sober person should reasonably be able to order a vodka pasta and 100% of the time expect to receive a pasta with no alcohol in it. To have pure vodka soaking noodles in a dish can not be anything else but pure negligence. Also to the owner, I ask - Do you think "We sell plenty of vodka pastas and will continue to sell them" is a compassionate response? Because that's the response I received.)

This is my final note to you, Jill - It's obvious you refuse to take ownership on behalf of your establishment. Not everyone's recovery looks the same - I have ordered plenty of vodka pastas since being sober and had no issues feeling triggered or having urges. You should not be telling anyone what their recovery should look like, and I don't know why you think telling me what my recovery should look like is an appropriate response to me pointing out a very disgusting thing your chef said to me.. The problem was that your noodles were quite LITERALLY soaking in vodka. It was NOT cooked at all. I would not have written this review at all because of that isolated incident occurring. I wrote this review because your chef said to me "We sell plenty of vodka pastas and will continue to sell plenty of...

We stopped by as we saw good reviews and we love Ital.food. especially after visiting Italy. See our previous review of Villa Bellini-Clearwater.The outside patio was empty and didn't look inviting. We opted to eat inside.We were seated in a hot corner-everything was very close together, and we were ready to leave when they moved us to a more open table. The waiter was very friendly, and brought us two house wines that were very uninspiring. Bread came next, not the crusty kind, which was served with a not very good olive oil. We asked for butter-the butter came in little plastic packets-but it wasn't fresh and had a strange consistency. We should have cut our losses here. Next came the Caesar salad which had no green to it at all- hearts of romaine are not ALL white- a ton of croutons, and what tasted like Italian salad dressing. The anemic tasteless chicken picata came next. We chose this dish because the parmesan dishes looked like the typical "throw a bunch of cheese and marinara sauce on top of everything". We sent it back and asked for our check. The atmosphere is a room full of close together tables with unattractive colored plastic tablecloths. The clientele on this evening was overwhelmingly elderly. We...