Fiamma Ristorante — Restaurant in Charlotte

I am confused about how this place has such rave reviews. I came here with a party of 6 on Saturday night. The place was operating at half capacity due to covid restrictions. Even at half capacity, it wasn’t full. First of all, I like how you can call the restaurant number and get the manager directly even outside of restaurant hours. He isn’t the friendliest person to talk to though. I also like how you can text the number to communicate with the manager. He was very quick and helpful when responding. We had reservations and were seated immediately upon arrival. We ordered drinks first thing and it took no less than 10 minutes to receive them. I ordered a simple lemonade from the fountain. When it came time to order food, the waitress reviewed the “specials” and most of us were sold on them immediately. I chose the Chilean Sea Bass special served with fried artichokes, spaghetti squash and asparagus. I asked the waitress to hold the asparagus since I don’t like it. She told me that I can’t sub it since they are “short staffed due to covid”. Interestingly, one of my friends was able to add a whole chicken breast to his pasta which only came with shrimp according to the menu. (This is important: my friends ordered a side of Alfredo sauce when we placed our food order.) My plate arrived with asparagus anyway. Not a major deal since I could just not eat it. My food was room temperature at best which was confusing because a they acted like I would burn myself if I touched the plate. And the food took so long to come out - it should have been piping hot. Slow service was the theme for the evening. Back to the food. The fish was cooked nicely and tasted pretty good. The fried artichokes tasted oil-soaked. The spaghetti squash was tasteless and this is usually something I enjoy. I asked the waitress for a side of Alfredo sauce to help the squash. Remember that side of sauce that my friends ordered? They hadn’t received it yet and by now, we’ve had the food for at least 5 minutes . The waitress said the sauce was cooked to order - at least theirs should have been ready since they ordered it when we placed the food order. So at least 10 more minutes after we received the food, all three orders of sauce came out. We were nearly done with our food by the time it arrived. I’m no master chef, but I do make Alfredo sauce from scratch pretty regularly at home. This sauce was basically a bowl of cream with melted butter and powdered Parmesan cheese dumped on top. Not what I expected from an authentic Italian restaurant. Definitely not how I make mine. We all finished our food and agreed that it was decent, but not worth returning for. It took what seemed like an eternity to receive the bill and everyone at the table was shocked at the price tag. The “special” was $38. Now I didn’t expect anything cheap based on other menu items, but nothing on the menu was over $25. I did not receive a $38 sized piece of fish nor was the flavor of anything on my dish worth that. The drinks were all on the wrong tickets but we just decided to pay and reimburse each other later as needed because we figured it might take another 30 minutes to get the tickets sorted. It seemed as though there was only one waitress servicing the entire restaurant. Another issue I had, automatic 20% gratuity was included. Most restaurants I visit do this for parties of 8 or more and they provide you this in a disclaimer up front. There are other authentic Italian spots in town with great service and delicious food. Luce comes to mind.. I wish i had noticed before visiting that most of the one and two star reviews are within the past two years. Of course those weren’t showing...

Definitely a date-night sort of place for the prices. There is a very distinct smell when you walk in though, that I wasn't able to ever quite place. It wasn't pleasant, and I felt like an Italian restaurant should smell more like garlic and basil and tomatoes than...whatever that smell is. So for me that was an immediate ding.

Service was friendly and very polite, but staff seemed a little disorganized or like too many people working in too small a space. We were seated at a booth-backed table facing the kitchen doors and bar where all the water pitchers sit, so not quite the ambiance one might hope for. It also seemed to be the preferred place for staff to chat as they were drying glasses, making drinks or just in between tasks.

Food was hit or miss. They serve fresh bread cubes with homemade pesto with your meal, which was very good. They also served us a sorbet in-between our appetizer and main course for a pallet cleanser which was a nice touch. We were there for Restaurant Week, so there were a couple items not on their normal menu. We ordered the Burrata and the Beet Salad appetizers. The beet salad had no layered flavor at all in spite of the accompaniments. It just tasted like beets with a hint of flavor/salt from the cheese. The Burrata paired with the meat and arugula with balsamic was much better. I would recommend that one. For our main dishes, we ordered the Monk fish with mashed potatoes and asparagus which was fine, but again, nothing special (although it's worth noting that the tiny scallops were cooked perfectly), and the Ribeye which came with truffle fries and arugula salad. I have to say, the steak was big (about 5-6 inches in length and about 4 inches wide) but easily the thinnest ribeye I have ever seen; it was maybe 1-inch thick before cooking. I ordered it medium, but what I got was almost well-done. Our server offered to have them redo it, which I accepted, and she took the steak back on an appetizer plate while I ate the arugula and "truffle" fries, which for us had no noticeable truffle flavor. A few minutes later, she came back by and I asked if it would be possible to get a little more truffle oil for the fries. She turned to another girl who had just walked up with a whole plate of the ribeye and sides, and said something in Spanish to her (none of the staff spoke English to each other that we heard the entire time we were there; hearing all the staff speaking Spanish in an Italian restaurant is a little comical), and the girl took the plate back in the kitchen. A few minutes later, a different person came out with that whole plate I'd seen before (ribeye and sides) and set it down, taking my old plate. Major kudos for offering a whole new plate and sides! But when I said I wanted more truffle oil, I had meant for the fries on my old plate. The new fries (that I didn't realize I was getting) had been "double sauced" and were literally glistening with the truffle oil. I said thank you and we chuckled that we could dip our remaining bread in my fries now. I will say they were good though, and you could actually smell/taste the truffle oil that time. The new steak was a medium, so kudos on that too. Soon thereafter we moved on to our desserts. We got the Tiramisu which was very good, and the Panna Cotta which was more like thin pudding in consistency. Panna Cotta should be able to stand on its own like flan. This one could not, and was served in a ice-cream sundae glass. It was very tasty...but not a true Panna Cotta.

All said and done, it was good, but neither of us felt it was...

BUCKLE IN, THIS IS A LONG ONE My husband and I made reservations at Fiamma for Charlotte Restaurant Week. We previewed the menu online and were so excited to find fresh, authentic Italian food. We even booked our reservation weeks in advance because we were so excited. However, when we arrived our table wasn’t ready. This wasn’t a huge deal, but the hostess didn’t seem in a hurry to remedy the situation. Instead, she chatted at the hostess stand. It wasn’t until a waitress came up to us and asked if we had been helped that she cleared off a table for us to sit at. To be clear, no one was sitting at the table she cleared off, the hostess just completely ignored us. When we sat down, our busser (who was extremely kind and helpful) brought us fresh bread and water. We looked over the menu and were happily chatting about what we wanted to order. The fresh bread was amazing, as well as the pesto they brought with it. We talked about the fact that if the bread and pesto were this good, then we were in for a real treat. Unfortunately, This is where the night took a turn for the worse. After around 15 or so minutes, we flagged the boy who brought us bread and water, assuming he was our waiter. He said that he wasn’t the waiter and when we explained that we had been waiting for a while and our server hadn’t been over, he profusely apologized and said he would send her over. A short while later a woman came to our table and offered no apology, no kindness, and offered to take our order. We were going to order a bottle of wine, but she seemed in a hurry, so we gave her our menu choices. That is the last we saw of her for over 30 minutes. While we watched the tables around us arrive with food, our waitress was at the hostess stand, chatting. She not only had not bothered to check on us, but she either forgot about us or simply didn’t care. After being at the restaurant for 45 minutes with nothing but water and bread, we decided to call a manager over. Turns out, our waitress WAS the manager. I told her that in the 30-35 minutes we were seated we saw her ONCE and had been waiting over half an hour for the appetizers. They were cold appetizers, so I was curious what was taking so long. She offered no apology and said that she could “check on it for us.” I said that it this point, we were going to cut our losses and go somewhere else. She said “Well, I can personally ensure you receive your food.” I was absolutely appalled that her idea of addressing our concerns with her inattentiveness was to offer to do the bare minimum requirements of her job. We said “No, thank you” and left. We ended up going next door to Inizio Pizza for their absolutely fabulous pistachio pesto pizza. The sad thing is, their food could have been amazing, but we never even tasted it. I understand that the busy time of Restaurant Week can result in unforeseen complications that can hinder prompt service. I want to be clear that our issue was NOT the amount of time, but the fact that our waitress/manager rushed to take our order and then disappeared to chat with her friends at the hostess stand. My husband and I go to Luce regularly and were expecting something similar customer service wise. We were sorely disappointed and cannot in good faith recommend this...