Ciao Bella — Restaurant in Charleston

Where to begin. It was Valentine's night last night and my wife and I had reservations for 6pm. We hit traffic and called ahead, and they said that was no problem and told us that our reservation would be honored and table not given away and they thanked us for calling in. So far so good. We get there and the place is slammed with reservations and walk-ins packed in the very small entry. Tell them tha we are here for our 6pm reservation and the tell us that it'll be a wait because people are still eating and they are not rushing people out the door. Okay fine. We wait for 25 minutes before the people in front of us get seated. Their reservation was for 630pm and us fr 600pm. But another table opened up right behind theirs so no big deal

Then we get seated and have to wait over 5 minutes for water! This was a red flag for the rest of the meal. Our server comes up to us smelling like a chimney, and says have you been helped? We told him no and then he gives a smirk, and walks away to get water while handing us the menus. In this time another couple in front of us is seated and has water immediately and bread immediately! We still have nothing. Another couple of minutes go by and we finally have water but no bread. He asked of we knew what we would like as an appetizer and we placed our order. A few minutes go by and we both are out of water. Then he brings us bread sets it down on the table fast, fills the plates with olive oil and quickly turns around to go to another table. We stopped him because we needed more water and to ask about the menu.

There was only one menu, a Valentine's Day menu with 3 apps, 3 main entrees, and 3 desserts to choose from served with a half glass of sparkling wine for $50 a person. They usually have a good sized menu with more options so we asked for that one. Looking around everyone had the same Valentine's Day menu, but it didn't hurt to ask. The server said no, this is our only menu because of the occasion. Okay fine, is what it is. He comes back a couple minutes later with water and asks for our appetizer order. We put it in. And more problems occur.

Every other server is regularly walking around with pitchers of water and is being hospitable. Why is our server so slow? Because he's clearly going outside to smoke or taking multiple breaks away from the dining area. But suddenly friends of the owner show up and are seated right behind us and guess who comes out nowhere to serve them and chat up? No other than our same server. And they say we don't want the specials give us the regular menu.....and the server did immediately followed by him getting us water. He knew he made a mistake because I started at their menu while he asked if we needed anything.

The apps come out for us and tastes okay. We placed our main entree order as well. I got the mussles and my wife got the tuna salad. I got 9 mussles total. I gave my wife one, two of the shells were empty, and one hadn't popped open yet (I popped it open and spit it out because it was a bad mussle). So 6 good mussles out of 9. Whatever. Her tuna salad was okay she said. In this time the table in front of us already has their main meal, and the owners friends have their appetizers. Yet we had to wait a while. Just wow. However he did start keeping up on the water refills okay after the apps were brought out.

The main course was brought out in a fairly decent time frame. Again tasted okay it was nothing special. We both got the seafood pasta. Hers turned out good, I still had one unopened clam and an empty mussle shell. Not surprising that the owners friends behind us had their entree very soon after we did. Then while we were about 3/4 done with our entree the server asks us for our dessert order. Ridiculous! But we put it in. A few minutes go by and lucky we just finished eating when not only the dessert but the check comes to our table. We clearly was being rushed.

Between the blatant lies from our server about the menu, okay but way overpriced menu, slow service, and customer favoritism, we will not be...

So we have been driving by this place for awhile and since we couldn't get reservations at Wild Olive, we decided to stop in here. Our food was great, a little disappointed by the Zuppa de pesa that came with clams, mussels and shrimp ( it was $25 and was just sad looking) BUT everything else was yummy and looked amazing. Our service was on point too. So we had 2 issues that really made our party of 7 skins crawl. The manager stayed posted up behind us almost the entire time...I mean I could have reached my hands and scratched my head and would have came dangerously close to hitting her. It was so annoying, everyone at our table just kept staring at her while she lingered directly behind my head, she would walk away for a moment and a few seconds later she would return..we couldn't seem to shake her. I finally asked in a very friendly way if I could help her and she didnt respond but never returned. Thank god. The last thing that drove us for a loop, most likely causing all of our party to never return, despite the great food was a lady came in with her pet dog and sat at the bar. Now I know dogs are allowed in restaurants as long as they are service dogs and are clearly displaying paperwork stating they are a dog. This dog had none visable. No big deal at first, until the lady put the dog on the bar and would tear up the free bread they give out and put it on the bar for the dog to eat off the bar. All 7 of us were disgusted. Clearly the dog shouldn't be aloud on the bar or even to eat off the bar service dog or not (which it clearly wasn't). We asked our server what the deal was he said it wasn't a service dog and it was a issue that he didn't want to get into, bc she was a regular. Insane!!! I hope the owner or management realizes how disgusting this is and how many people see this and never return. I hope DHEC walks in one night to dine and catches them restaurant allowing this. Totally disgusting and never returning! Too bad for them because despite the annoyance, the food was...

Me and my wife went last night expecting another delicious meal as we had 6 months, it was our anniversary and I wanted to treat her to a delicious meal . Well it wasn't as delicious as our first experience, our pasta was overcooked, they ran out of michelob ultra ( they only serve 4 types of beer and the place wasn't packed there were only 4 tables being used at 6pm so they should have had plenty of beer in stock) the bruschetta appetizer we ordered which was so delicious 6 months ago was not very exciting and very bland which was disappointing because my wife wanted to go there just for that. I ordered bread with my meal which we received before our appetizer, the bread was these little bite sized pieces that you would serve to a child, it was like they took two regular size pieces of bread and cut them into small pieces (it was $3 for the bread). another disappointment was the cannoli my wife ordered for dessert, it was a little stale and very skinny like a childs serving, the real kicker was the fact that they charged us $12 for that one single skinny cannoli, an absolute rip off !!! They had one bathroom out of order so everyone had to use one bathroom which was not very clean. The table of people to my left was also having a bad experience ,one of them got something they didn't order and the server said he would take it off their bill but didn't until the gentleman got the bill and pointed it out to him which seemed to aggravate the server? Overall it wasn't a good dining experience, on the contrary it was very disappointing and we will not be returning unfortunately. I don't know what happened in the last 6 months but that restaurant isn't the same and wouldn't recommend it to anyone who's looking for a delicious Italian...