Giardino — Restaurant in Chattanooga

We were in town on vacation and had reservations for my birthday on Saturday, Oct 5th. My husband called to see if we could get in early. We were placed on hold for ten minutes, the girl came back to the phone and my husband asked again if we could come in earlier as an event we were attending ended sooner than we thought, and she acted as if she didn’t comprehend the request. We decided to drive there in hopes we could get seated earlier. Upon arrival we were greeted with two ladies at a hostess stand who looked completely miserable. When we told them we had later reservations and asked if we could get in earlier the hostess looked at us as if this was a ridiculous request and then signed and said the only table we have is a high top. We weren’t told the location of the table. Ok we took the table. Our table was in the aisle next to the bar and directly next to another table where the person seated was six inches away from my elbow. We had plain view of the kitchen and heard every bit of conversation. Our waiter was great. Very attentive however he was the only part of the dinner that was great unfortunately. We placed our dinner order shortly after 5:30. I ordered the chicken piccata and my husband ordered the veal chop which he was really looking forward to. 6:00 rolls around still no dinner. 6:15 rolls around still no dinner yet we are watching at least 10-15 to go orders go out the door. We finally are told your orders are being plated next…. No visit from a manager NOTHING. We finally received our food well over an HOUR after we ordered with an apology from the server that the manager passed on. Why is the server doing the managers job? The manager clearly needs some education on how to do his job and run things better than they were being run. We were offered a free dessert for waiting for over an hour for our dinner. We declined. Now let’s talk about the food. My husband ordered his veal chop medium. NOT even close. It came out rare hardly even cooked. I ordered chicken piccata with garlic/olive oil pasta. The only thing even remotely hot on my plate was the pasta. How do you screw up chicken picatta?? I took two bites of the chicken and was done. Who wants to eat not even luke warm food? Our poor server was left to deal with something the manager should have followed up on and when we tried to seek him out when we left, he was hiding outside. Service from our server was great. Everything else was terrible from the unwelcoming hostess until the time we left. Would not recommend to anyone. Terrible. I cannot understand how this place gets such great reviews. I am sure it is mostly from locals who go regularly. Maybe they pay more attention to people they see on a...

My husband and I made a reservation for our 3rd wedding anniversary. We were taking a trip to Chattanooga for the night and wanted to have a nice dinner together. We chose Giardino for the great reviews we read online. Sadly, we didn’t have a great experience.

Leading up to our reservation, we received a call from someone at the restaurant who congratulated us and asked if we drank so that they could greet us with a toast on our table. This set high expectations for the service we would receive and we were very excited for our dinner.

When we made it to the restaurant, the host was not very welcoming and I don’t think she read the notes on our reservation because no mention of our celebration was made. It was okay, but we were disappointed because of the expectation that was set earlier that day. We were sat and our waitress was very kind and bubbly, but not very personable. We had to ask for bread service, which maybe this is normal but we found it odd.

The highlights of our meal were the Italia Colada and crème brûlée. Both were divine and we would drive hours back for those. We finally had a chance to mention to our server at the end of the meal that we were celebrating our wedding anniversary, and she comped the dessert which was extremely kind of her. The chicken alfredo was great as well, and a very large portion.

We were however, disappointed in the shrimp and polenta. The overwhelming flavor was hot sauce, and we would not have ordered the dish had we known it was made with hot sauce because it was not advertised that way on the menu. My husband didn’t eat much of the dish for that reason and we wanted to bring it up to our server but she came and grabbed our plates and walked away quickly, not asking if anything was wrong with it.

That night, the restaurant was hosting a wedding party on the patio and despite that, we received fast service and our food came out quickly. That was impressive considering the workload they already had, but the other factors led to an overall disappointing...

I'd like to preface that we've been so excited to try this place and the staff we did get to interact with were kind, the decor is cute, the staff all looked so cute, but... We made reservations weeks ago for our anniversary and confirmed the day prior. After struggling for parking for 5-10 minutes (poorly marked spots and double parked people everywhere...) we sat for over an hour and ten minutes (they called us while we were seated in front of the waiting area, but never called the other guests that I could tell because they were personally ushered to their tables... So we didn't expect that to be a thing) inside the restaurant without being sat even though SEVERAL parties that were there before and after us got sat before we ever would. Everyone coming in without reservations was getting told it would be 45-1hr. After the hour and change of waiting we kindly went to the hosts and told them we'd just rather just cancel and go at that point. Twenty. Twenty whole minutes after we left they called again, but we didn't answer because again, no one said anything about calls, because everyone else personally was seated and at this point we had cancelled and left to go somewhere else... They then texted us to tell us they cancelled our reservations... I honestly would've been fine with not getting sat and having to leave due to how very busy they were, but that's just ridiculous. We aren't the type of people to just make reservations and we don't go out to things a lot... So it kind of just sucked all around. If you get sat I hope you get up enjoy it because the food looked fantastic. Just really disappointed. 🤷 The bathroom that we were able to find also wasnt very accessible. Considering how long we waited I had to go a couple times, due to health reasons. If I were someone with a daily mobility aide like a walker or wheelchair I'm not at all certain if you'd be able to get to the restroom let alone get your...