The Centro — Restaurant in Cleveland

Very disappointing private dining experience for our group of 22. It was honestly a mess and after some thought, this review is warranted. It started with forgotten communication when booking with the limited menu available, which we were able to compromise on. When we arrived, we had 2 additional guests able to make it last minute. This has never been a problem when hosting private dinners elsewhere, which I do often for work. A comment was made to me that “it was a problem because I signed a contract for 20, not 22.”, which I was very surprised at. Not professional. The guests offered to go elsewhere but they “made it work”. We had 1 server for our whole group and he did a fantastic job for being one person, but just couldn’t keep up. I felt bad for him. We all waited on drinks over 30 minutes each time. Missed opportunity for the restaurant because our bill would’ve been even higher had we had the opportunity to actually order drinks. Appetizers were good. Entrees were terrible (not exaggerating) and took almost 3 hours to come out. Steaks well done, majorly over cooked to point of being inedible.. 7 guests were unable to cut into and eat at all. Food/sides Luke warm. By this time it was 10:30pm. Our reservations were 7:30-9:30 as we had other plans that night. Ordered dessert and didn’t end up leaving until 11:15. Way too long. Some meals were comped as they should have been, but after spending thousands of dollars, it still didn’t make up for the very poor experience on this special occasion. I also did not appreciate the excuse given that we showed up late. We did not. For some reason, the staff was under the impression our reservation was at 7pm. I had to show them my contract and email that said 730pm. We (the hosts) were 5 minutes early and half of our guests were there before us. All my guests talk about from that night was how horrible the restaurant was, not the occasion we were celebrating....

Had dinner at the Centro with a larger group under a reservation. We were sat right away. We mainly all ordered some combo of pizza and pasta, and I got a chance to try a couple of the pasta dishes others ordered. I wasn’t a big fan of any of the pasta (bolognese, chicken Parm, truffle cream) or pizzas (Margherita, pepperoni) we had. The hot honey pepperoni was the best of the bunch, but I’m not a big fan of onions, and I pulled an onion piece the size of my thumb from the pizza sauce, and I think it was the same sauce on the pasta. The pasta noodles were really dense and heavy. Almost closer to the consistency of a gnocchi than a noodle. I also had the wedge salad. The bowl it came in was strangle shaped to the point it was hard to keep the contents inside and they kept rolling into my lap. The pasta seems way overpriced for the quality. I guess the pizza is cheaper, so it’s not so badly priced for a downtown spot.

The service was so bad. I think they actually forgot about us at one point. They would come over and refill water for only a couple people at the table when we were all out of water. We went the entire meal without being asked if we wanted another drink. We actually went up to the bar on the 2nd floor to get a drink twice during the meal because we couldn’t get the server’s attention at all. We were here on the Sunday of a holiday weekend, so I think it’s possible they were understaffed, thinking it would be less busy? However, there was a Guardians game, and the holiday, so I think they could have...

A five hour drive to enjoy a day of dinner and a game…. We arrive just before 2pm and were declined the brunch Menu and given a snack menu instead which was for the 2-4pm crowd. The snack menu had pizza and salad options only. Very limited but we stayed. As we sat down the entire floor was sticky…..everywhere and most floors had some kind of food on them. We even asked them to clean our chairs as they also had food on them (they moved us to a different section instead). Now onto the food. The wedge salad was very good but presentation could have been better. You know when you have that first layer of iceberg lettuce that’s wilted and ‘old ‘ looking….they left that on ours. Like they rushed to put it together or the chef wasn’t onsite so a random person put it together. Not cool, very unappetising actually. On to the next salad…the basil and avocado salad; the leaves were soggy but the rest good and fresh. Perhaps too much vinegar and then they missed putting avocado on the avocado salad….. next to the chicken and artichoke pizza; it was very good but the crust was carbonized. Overall the food was eventually tasty underneath all of this but definitely a bad first and last impression. We wouldn’t eat here again unfortunately, for such an expensive type restaurant we were disappointed overall. Memorable for all the...