FORLINI'S RESTAURANT — Restaurant in Clearwater

I don’t normally do reviews, but this one couldn’t pass by.

Honestly, this place was the worst experience ever.

My family and I were visiting Clearwater beach from out of state. We felt like try Italian food since my husbands family is half Italian. We were also celebrating my parents 32 years anniversary and our friends 16 year anniversary. I called the restaurant and made reservations for 6 people. We arrived at the restaurant and were seated pretty quickly. Everything was going well until our orders arrived. The waiter had the unfortunate accident, spilling some hot lamb chops sauce over my mother’s head/ hair and arm because he was reaching over her head to give my husband the plate, which wasn’t even his order. The waiter saw what happen because my mom started to clean her arm with napkin towel. The waiter kept serving, reached over her head for the SECOND time to give the plate to my father. The waiter barley apologized and finished what he was doing and left.

My mother went to the bathroom to wash her head/hair and clean herself. The sauce was hot and burned her head a little. My mom came back to the table. The waiter came to our table to ask how the food was, like everything was just fine and nothing had happened

My mom mention that her head burned from the spill. That’s when he kinda weirdly said “oh sorry” and basically started giving my mother an awkward hug touching the sides of her arms and leaning down towards her. (this was the weirdest and most uncomfortable thing ever, I asked him not to touch her) he continued saying “it’s okay We’ll get her chocolate cake.” With an attitude it’s all good. My mother sat there uncomfortable and with a burn head.

To make matters even worst. Coincidentally, half way through our friend’s dinner she found hair on her salmon. We wanted to speak to a manager this time. The owner’s wife came, we told her about the first situation with the waiter spill ( just so he could be more aware and careful, next time). We told her about the new situation with the hair in the salmon. She took the plate away with a rude attitude, walked away never came a back to say anything about neither of the situations.

Everyone was already unhappy with what was happening. Side note, their food was actually good, but after all the rude attitude I completely lost my appetite.

Furthermore, who was still eating, finished. The waiter came with the checks (to our surprise they charged the salmon, with the hair) We called her back over to ask why they were charging. She rudely said “what our friend found was not hair, but it was bristles from the brush they clean the grill” and she added, “the plate was half eaten”. Her reply was completely unacceptable. Why would anyone be ok with having residue from cleaning tools on their food.?? I was completely stunned by their attitude.

She called the owner (the husband) He came over already angry. My husband and I were nicely trying to explain to him the situation, however he didn’t even let me finish what I was saying. With the rudest attitude possible he said “let me just cut this short, there is an email you can send whatever you want on there.” In shock I replied “ wow, we have someone with a burn here and someone with hair/ residue from their grill on the food, and that’s your attitude,” He reply with “go to the doctor to check that out,” like it was not his problem. He continued to say, “just pay your bill”. The rudest guy ever.

We do not have any issues paying good money for good food and good service. I can’t even say we had bad service, because what they did wasn’t even service. Their atitudes and action toward us were disgusting, rude, disrespectful and oppressive. I’ve never experienced such rude people in my life.

In conclusion, I’ve never experienced this terrible situation before. I DO NOT recommend this place. Save yourself from the...

So this place is so incredibly confused!

From the outside it looked like a nice fine dining Italian restaurant and the menu posted seemed the same with prices I’d expect to see at the fine dining Italian restaurants I frequent in NY.

Once inside and seated though the fine dining portion disappears quickly!!

Like I said we liked the look from the outside so the wife and I decided to give it a try.

We were seated by a super friendly hostess and handed wine and spirits lists.

Credit where credit is due both were great. As a bourbon drinker I was super impressed with their whisky menu old forester, four roses small batch and etc

However this is where the positives end.

My wife who is a very light eater order the caprese app and I ordered the pasta bolognese. When ordering my wife was informed that because she only ordered an app she wasn’t to receive any bread. We thought the waitress was kidding till she came back a short while later with a single roll for me. And then she proceeded to watch like a hawk to make sure I wasn’t sharing said roll because then my wife’s appetizer would become a dinner and they’d charge $5 additional for it as per the menu. I was in disbelief.

When the food came out we got the second shocker my wife caprese was $15 and consisted of 1 slice of tomato cut in four and one slice of mozzarella cut in four and some balsamic it literally fit on a small bread plate.

Btw absolutely zero flavor the worst mozzarella I’ve ever had and the balsamic had no flavor either.

My pasta was served on a medium salad plate and had maybe a single scoop of bolognese sauce on it. Keep in my the prices my pasta was $25 ish - I will say the flavor here was good though.

Best part of the whole meal though was when my wife asked for a soda and this fine dining establishment brought a can of coke to the table poured half and left it sitting there.

We were then rushed the entire meal waitress tried to take my plate before I was done eating, never got asked if I wanted another drink, water wasn’t refilled and the check was dropped while my wife was still eating her food. Literally they pushed us out in 45 min For $63 and basically nothing it was so disappointing

Please for the love of god do...

Unfortunately I have to leave this review to explain why we'll never come back to this restaurant.

We had a group of 6 people eating there, that was an anniversary of ours friends, and my parents in law. At first look the restaurant looked nice

We ordered the plates and when they brought them the waiter dropped a hot sauce from one of the plates on the head of my mother in law (which burned her head) , the waiter didn't say sorry very well and only after we tried to talk with him about it, he basically tried giving my mother an law a awkward hug and saying something like "it's ok, we'll bring a chocolate cake to her, a very weird and disrespectful attitude.

After that she went to the restroom to try to wash her hairs and she noticed she was a little bit burned, but she as a very nice person said it was ok, and we started to eat. Coincidentally a friend that was with us found TWO hairs on her plate, we called the service again to explain the new situation. This time was the owner's wife. We explained both situation, she took the plate away and never came back.

Who was still eating, finished and they brought the check... The plate with the hair was included on the check.

We called the owner's wife again, she just told us there wasn't any hairs on her plate, and it was just bristles came from the brush they clean the grill and the plate was half eaten.

We replied that it was unacceptable, and she called her husband, the owner. He came already angry, and me and my wife tried to explain the situation, so he didn't even let us finish explaining, then he said something like, "we have an email, you can send me any text, but you need to pay the check now". We were absolutely shocked after this reply.

This situation was unacceptable.. I've never seen that before in my life.. the worse service of my life. We have some videos of the occurred situation to prove everything.

I hope this can alert you and prevent you from future headaches. The food was very good, and I'm not used to saying anything bad about the places, but after that I needed to leave...