Oregano's — Restaurant in Chandler

Our family went to Oregano's at 1960 Germann Saturday evening 4/13/19. We were celebrating our granddaughter's birthday and stopped here for dinner following Disney on Ice. We arrived just before 6pm, party of 7, including two three year olds. We were told the wait was a half an hour, which seemed reasonable, however it took much longer than that. When we were finally taken to our table, it was half of a booth with two chairs on the other half; may I remind you that we were a party of 7. When we questioned the size of the table, we were told we could sit outside at a larger table but when we arrived outside, it was also a table for 4 that appeared even smaller. We went back to the original table and were told we could put two high chairs on the end and should be fine. We squeezed three adults on the booth side, put one high chair on the end and one high chair between the two chairs opposite the booth. Needless to say no one had much room to move, but by the time we were finally seated we had waited long enough and were all starving. It took our server quite some time to come to the table. We ordered and then sat and waited, and waited, and waited. Our server finally came back to our table to refill our drinks, yes it was that long of a wait. We inquired how much longer it would be and the server replied that it shouldn't be too much longer; we explained that we should hope not being that we'd already been there an hour and a half. The server replied "yeah, Friday and Saturday night are our busiest nights" and left our table; no apology for the delay, no offer to bring the kids food out asap since we'd been waiting so long, no nothing. She may as well have said she didn't care how long our wait was or how long the food was taking because that was her attitude. About 20 minutes later, our food finally arrived, the three year olds were so hungry that a meltdown was moments away. We ordered pasta and one sandwich, so I simply cannot understand why our food took so long. The sandwich that was served was the wrong sandwich, but our server hadn't been around to check on us to get the correction made. Finally a gentleman stopped at our table to ask how we were doing and we explained we received the wrong sandwich. He promptly made the correction and told us to keep the wrong order, the correct sandwich made its way to our table fairly quickly. As I said previously, we were celebrating our granddaughter's birthday, but due to the extensive wait, the three year olds had had enough and we left not getting to have a celebratory dessert. Our server stopped by our table very few times and numerous tables who arrived after us got their food and left long before we did. As this was our first visit, I was extremely disappointed and will likely not be returning. For those families with little ones, I would recommend that if you find yourself headed to this location on a Saturday evening, feed the kids before you go. Our server clearly didn't care that small children can't understand that they're just going to have to wait because "it's their busy night". Our tab was over $80, which I can't help but feel was a waste; we waited so long that everyone was frustrated and starving and we didn't even get to celebrate, which was the purpose of our visit. Our experience was so very disappointing. The staff seemed very out of sync; almost 3 hours spent at this restaurant, most of it spent waiting; we had nothing from the bar and didn't get to order dessert for fear of how much longer we'd have to wait. The service was completely unacceptable which not only made it difficult to enjoy the food, it ruined what should have been a joyous fun-filled...

(Really long, detailed review) I usually love Oregano’s. Every other location I’ve been to were great but this location on 1960 W. Germann Rd. in Chandler Az, had such bad service. I called in the afternoon to ask if they made reservations, they didn’t which is fine. I asked if they could put me on a waitlist, as I wanted to give them a heads up that I was planning on coming in around 7pm with a party of 9 for my husband’s birthday. The lady that answered the phone said it shouldn’t be a problem because Monday’s aren’t busy nights but she would let the manager know do they could try to keep some tables available for the big party. When we arrived about 7:20pm, the hostess told us it would be a 30 minute wait for a table. We were okay waiting. After about 7 minutes waiting, the hostess told us that the wait for the tables would be about 30-40 minutes now. She offered us a long booth with a chair at the end. My husband and I looked at the other long booth next to it and saw there were 4 adults sitting pretty close and determined that 4 adults a 5 kids would not fit even with the chair at the end. We saw a large circle booth that was waiting to be cleaned. We asked if we could sit there. The hostess and a server told us that booth can only sit 7. So we declined the long booth again and said we’d still wait for the tables. Another 10 minutes go by, another server asked us if we wanted the long booth or wait for the tables. We said we told the hostess we would wait. She offered the round booth to us. We told her the other server said we couldn’t fit. ANOTHER 7 MINUTES GO BY, the hostess came to tell us that the people at the tables we were waiting on to finish ordered more food and they wouldn’t have the tables available for us after all. At this point we’ve been waiting about 25-30 mins. We asked hostess if we could take the round booth and the small table next to it. She was hesitant but said yes after few minute of talking to the servers. We finally sat down, and there was room in the rounded booth for all 9 of us. We still had some of the kids sit in the other side table but we all could have fit in the rounded booth like we originally asked them. The server didn’t introduce herself, was not happy, took our orders, told us they stopped making the pan pizza at 7:45 because it takes time to cook, very upsetting because that’s what we wanted. We order a pepperoni pizza, she brought us cheese only. No great service all around. At the end of the dinner, I saw our servers name, Savannah, on the check....

I'll start by saying: We love the tempe and Mesa locations. We took my sister to the Chandler location on a random Wednesday night around 5pm, as we'd never been to this location.

We were told to wait in the bar (no problem)..... but when we got there, we were told we had to sit at the actual bar, not a table in the bar. Apparently because they were understaffed. --OK, I get it. No big deal.

My sister tried to order a diet soda. ....was told there were no diet sodas ...at all. Husband ordered a beer, which took 20-30 minutes to apparently 'clean' the tap, but I got my chardonnary quickly enough (albeit in a slightly dirty, cracked glass).

So: we're starving. Eventually (maybe 40 mins later?) someone came to find out if we wanted to sit at a table to eat. Because we love the other locations, we're 'sticking it out' at this point, despite the warning signs. Then.... Saw 2 other tables practically come to blows with staff over horrible, late, and incorrect food. We kept waiting.

kindly waitress finally comes to take our order for a pizza (we probably sat another 15 mins) , and we were told it would take 55 minutes. ....for a pizza? .... at a pizza chain where I know we get pizza in 15-20 mins tops, usually. yikes.

So we changed our order to pastas. --Still sticking it out. --Waited 45 minutes more. Clearly INEPT manager finally came around to speak to us and she promised we'd have food in 10 minutes: --she never came back. and we never got our food.

All-in, we were there around 2 hours. Oh.... We also watched the table next to us sit down, and get their food in about 18 minutes.

Warning signs: Tons of staff just standing around doing nothing in the front. Other staff running around like crazy. Clearly AWFUL manager if a restaurant has no diet soda, and no tap beer ready to serve. I mean: are you kidding me? 4.Clearly no proper direction to the kitchen, the bar, or to the staff overall (manager, Feb 2020