LaRosa's Pizza Boudinot — Restaurant in Cincinnati

Ahhh... I feel very sad that La'Rosa's did not meet my expectations in any regard...but I will give them 1 extra star for at least trying.

Arrived on a Sunday night at 8:54pm, was informed they are open until 11, giving the 3 of us plenty of time to eat. Our waitress was clearly new. She took our order, then repeated it back to us with 2 mistakes. Sub the minestrone for onion soup, and the toppings for the calzone were wrong. We corrected her. She then repeated it back, wrong again. I thought maybe we'd have to write it down ourselves, but she said she figured it out.

Started with an order of fries, my Dad received the onion soup(positive so far!). No complaints. Then the garlic bread arrived with the kitchen ticket still in the basket. Rookie mistake, no harm done. Then the calzones came - really disappointed here! Smaller than I expected for $7, and 50% of the dish was all bread. The entire ends of the calzone (arrived cut into 3 pieces) were all bread. So tragic.

Then my Dad's spaghetti and meatballs arrived, with only 2 meatballs. He called our waitress and asked if that was correct. She responded saying "I'd be happy to bring you another meatball." The dish was supposed to come with 3. Offering to bring a 3rd as a side (and implying we'd pay extra) is not a remedy. She then had an awkward back and forth, and she finally walked away, bringing a soup cup of 2 meatballs and sauce. They went from 1 to 2 stars for at least attempting to fix it, though she refused to own her error.

Unfortunately the rest of the night was a dud. The waitstaff began to vigorously clean the nearby booths. Still 90 minutes to close. Like lifting up booth cushions next to us. It made us feel like it was time to go.

The meal was over and we paid our check. The waitress picked up her receipt, and took away all 3 of our glasses. I totally respect clearing the plates away. Grabbing the check while your table is still sitting sometimes is tacky....but flat out clearing our table and all but wiping it down made it obvious we were no...

This is the original LaRosa's pizza place. If you grew up anywhere west of I-75 in Cincinnati, you already knew that. My rating here really isn't fair. I don't particularly care for Larosa's food, at least no more than any other pizza place. It's not bad, if you knew me you would guess I've had a few LaRosa's Pizza's (and you'd be right). I love this place because when I was a kid, my house was 8 blocks away. I love this place because on the 3 or 4 days in my teen years when I had money, I came here with my friends. (That part is a bald-faced, outrageous lie, corpse-broke or flush, our high school crowd ended up here 12-15 weekends a year, every year, for the better part of a decade. My memory isn't what it used to be, I could be 50% low on that count). My first date with my wife was at this restaurant. Love the place. Food though? I wont play cute: Their pizza sauce is utterly pedestrian, their salads taste like every other salad on the planet, and all of their other dishes are equivalent to every other pizza place's "other" dishes. Not to be mean, but if I was rating my favorite restaurant places by food only, this wouldn't make the top 20 pizza places in this mid-sized, Midwestern city. It might not make the top 40. In the interest of "equal time" I will tell you that my entire family disagrees with me. That's okay, my family members can be wrong, they are wrong a lot, and they've gotten really good at it! All of us love this place, and will always love this place. But am I sending out of town friends to LaRosa's? Maybe, if they're transplanted Cincinnatians. If they're from a city with a lot of really good restaraunts? I'd be shocked if anyone who has eaten pizza in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Oregon, Calcutta India, anywhere AT ALL, truly judged this to be anything other than middle-of-the-road pizza. There's always been a tiny part of me that was a little bit mad about that....

Profoundly sad to what has happened to this location. My family lives out of town, but we have come back again and again for many years on visits to the area, since my parents have been coming to LaRosa’s since this location was built when they were teenagers, and we’ve often held family reunions and celebrations here.This was our second visit back since the remodel: the first trip back put us in shock, but we hoped the poor service was just a one-time issue. When we ventured back today, we were just blown away by the complete lack of service. It took a long time to get waited on, and after we ordered, we didn’t see our waitress again for an exceptionally long time. Other customers near us seemed equally concerned.!I finally went to find someone, and found one worker working on the televisions: no one else was around. I asked her to check on our order: 10 minutes later, we finally saw someone check on a table near ours and asked again. She told us that they were busy with a party in a party room. No apologies, no expression of any kind of concern. After we finally got our food and ate, it all began again with trying to get our check, get a box/takeout cup, and pay. We gave up and left cash on the table to pay.

I think everyone understands things go wrong sometimes - but a simple apology and a genuine attempt to remedy the situation would have gone a long way. We were celebrating a milestone birthday with a casual lunch at an old nostalgic favorite, and would never have thought such a poor experience was possible. I really hope there is a manager paying attention so the issues at this iconic location can...