Bella'Gio — Restaurant in Cheshire

How do I even begin to describe the nightmarish dining experience that I had at this restaurant with my family?

To begin, it's extremely clear that this restaurant, including the owner, has no idea how to implement a reservation system. If you make a reservation here, expect to wait anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour after your scheduled reservation. Apparently, just by reading the responses from the owner, everyone is treated "equally." While this concept is all well and good, it literally defeats the purpose of a reservation. Common sense would tell you that if you would like to treat everyone equally you would make the restaurant walk ins only.

Speaking of common sense, the owners and or managers made it painfully clear tonight that neither have a sliver of it to begin with. As we were seated, 40 minutes after our reservation, we were told that the kitchen was extremely backed up due to only having three working kitchen staff members that night. We were told that we should quickly decide on food because it would take about an hour to get to our table. Luckily, we had earlier reservations and didn't mind waiting and having a few drinks before our food arrived. We placed an order for a round of drinks and two appetizers, calamari and bruschetta. We told our waiter that we would place our order when he came back with our drinks. After a twenty minute wait for two glasses of wine and a diet coke, we placed an order for two pizzas and two salads.

While waiting for our appetizers and sipping on our drinks we began to smell a horrific stench that filled the air and made everyone around us turn their heads in disgust. A worker had thrown out a wheelbarrow full of trash bags into the near by dumpster, about 100 feet from the outside tables, and the smell of days old garbage drifted and settled in the open air dining area. Lovely! We watched in horror as multiple people complained of the horrid smell.

After over an hour and a half of waiting, and the server "checking" to make sure he took our order correctly three times, they bring out our pizza. They did not bring out the appetizers nor the salads. One appetizer arrived 15 minutes later and the two salads 15 minutes after that. They forgot about one of our appetizers and the second salad was not correct. We were at the restaurant in total for about three hours. We attempted to order another round of drinks in the meantime, however our server forgot to place the order multiple times. Wow! What an experience.

Here's some common sense advice for the owners and/or managers. If you know that you are short staffed with only three staff members in the kitchen and two waiters for the entire outside dining area, don't fill up the restaurant to full capacity. Literally have your staff member say "Unfortunately we are not accepting anymore reservations for the night." In the alternative, say that you can only seat a smaller capacity due to short staffing. At the very least, figure out how to have an efficient reservation system. Furthermore, figure out a system that does not include having a dumpster directly adjacent to your outside dining area where the customers can smell literal rotting garbage when it is opened.

Our family witnessed at least 5 different tables complain tonight and it was clear that many more were disgruntled. It's clear that you have lost many customers due to an incompetent managerial system. We won't be back.

I would recommend anyone reading this review to drive 5 more minutes down the road to Viron Rondo Osteria.

One of, if not, the worst dining...

Absolute worst customer service and lack of professionalism EVER. We visited this restaurant 6 months ago and decided to return based on our first experience. Unfortunately, the last experience is what we will remember most and the reason we will NEVER return. We made a 7 pm reservation and were running a bit late. We called the restaurant to inform them of our delay to verify if our reservation was still good when we arrived. The woman on the phone assured my husband that we would be “ just fine “ when we arrived. When we arrived to check in, the place was packed in the waiting area…standing room only. The hostess was not at her station so we had to flag a waitress down to check in. She verified our name, found it on the list, crossed it off and told to us to “wait just one moment and I’ll be right back.” She never returned but passed us several times without making eye contact or acknowledging us again. After 20 minutes of waiting, we flagged down yet another waitress down to ask where the hostess is…the hostess finally returned to her desk, at which point she crossed of a party of 2, called their names and proceeded to seat them. When she returned, we addressed our concerns and she asked who checked us in. We explained what happened and she murmured under her breath that “she shouldn’t have done that…”. She excused herself and said she would return with some sort of solution. We saw her approach the waitress who checked us in and have a brief exchange with her. From that point on & for the next 25 minutes, we were blatantly ignored by all staff members. While we waited, we observed several larger parties in the waiting area becoming agitated as well. They approached an empty hostess stand several times to view the names on the list. The hostess returned, said nothing to us & did not even look at us. She crossed off a name, called them up and continued to seat 3 more parties ahead of us. It was now 7:50pm and we were still standing in the waiting area. When we finally spoke up at the hostess’ return to her desk, she acted as if she hadn’t a clue of why we were upset and when we questioned why nothing was being done, she proclaimed,” you don’t have to insult me!”. At which point, we clearly hadn’t. We pressed her for answers and accountability for hers and her coworker’s actions. She suggested that we “should’ve just asked for a manager” and asked why we didn’t. Taking her keen advice, we requested the manager. She got up and left her station. She Never returned in the 10 minutes it took for my husband to go outside and search for another restaurant to go( who took us in immediately and served us with kindness and efficiency). Bottom line…this restaurant, while it’s previous reputation and success stories has it literally swimming in profit, was not able to nor willing to accommodate its reservations within 30-45 minutes of their times(the party of 2 that were seated in our place in error was seated at 7:45pm and the hostess confirmed their reservation was for 7pm)nor were they able to provide the excellent customer service expected to save face in a seemingly chaotic mess of poor staff communication and customer accommodation. They simply didn’t care about what was going on and chose to pass the buck and do absolutely nothing to appease an extremely dissatisfied party who only chose to speak up after observing almost an hour of unprofessionalism, poor organization and complete lack of communication between themselves and their paying customers. WE WILL...

Drive by this place almost everyday during work and have been wanting to try it, so I finally got my chance when my sister set up my mother's birthday brunch here, thankfully I got to attend on my day off because my coworkers and I have debated stopping her for lunch so many times during work and that would have been a bad idea considering we only get 30mins for lunch. It was my first and last time visiting this restaurant, they saved themselves from a one star with the quality of their food, the food is absolutely delicious, tastes fresh, and the ingredients seem to be quality, but this is where the praise ends.

The only plate I can say that was worth the price was my stepfather's Chicken Parmigiana, everything else was so overpriced for the quantity they give you, the salad I ordered with added chicken (which costs extra) came to a total of 24$ so you would think it's a pretty sizeable portion, especially considering it's an Italian Restaurant serving classic Italian dishes, I expected plates reminiscent of my childhood when we'd have dinner at my Italian uncles house....this is why you never assume.

My plate looked like somebody just cubed a handful of tomatoes, cucumbers, and sliced onions, tossed it on the plate, slapped 4 cubes of feta on top, and finished it with a thin piece of chicken breast that was dryer then a desert in summer and made chewing on a leather boot strap seem more fun....and that's only after waiting almost an hour and a half for our food to arrive, my salad being the last thing to come out, a salad, and a measly salad at that, perhaps I was supposed to eat the massive plate it was on since that looked more filling!! (For perspective, I'm a 6"6, 290lb Male who does Landscaping for a living, I require quite a bit of food to keep this furnace fueled properly.)

Tell me how a handful of veggies on a plate take longer than chicken Parmigiana w/ pasta, chicken Marsala, massive plate of Penne Ala Vodka (the only large plate their because pasta is cheap obviously), and lobster ravioli topped w/ jumbo shrimp? I'm guessing it's all the time they spent dehydrating my piece of chicken breast!

Despite the slow food service, the wait staff are actually very attentive with refilling drinks and checking if you need any additional orders and are very polite and professional, so my guess is the kitchen staff is responsible for the food service here being slower than my memaw walking backwards during a marathon, this service was slower than a turtle on a treadmill trying to reach a carrot!

So in conclusion, if you like waiting almost 2 hours to eat, obnoxious parties with children running around you, and paying for overpriced plates that would leave a starving man still starving, this place is for you. For all others, go to Alberto's in Seymour or Italian Pavilion in Derby if you want delicious food at similar prices but provide quality AND quantity to make...