San Marzano — Restaurant in Dallas

TL;DR Extremely poor service, mediocre food. 3 stars, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since they are still a new restaurant. But if I recieve poor service again if i come back, it will be 1 star.

I wish I could say I had as great an experience as everyone else. I had heard great things about the food and the large servings, and I was excited to try the tiramisu. 5pm on a Thursday and there was only one other couple in the place, we should have taken it as a sign to go elsewhere for dinner. Upon entering there is no noticable host stand and no sign for direction to either wait or seat ourselves. After a minute of debate, my partner and I were finally greeted by a host and told to sit wherever we'd like.

Our server never introduced herself, she simply gave us glasses of water and asked for our order. She did not write down our order or even seem to have any method to take note of our order. As she turned to leave, she turned to my partner and confirmed his order 3 more times. When I asked about my order, she replied with "let me make sure we're still serving that tonight." This interaction was upsetting for several reasons. Firstly because if she was not confident in memorizing our orders. Secondly, a server should know what items are and aren't available before greeting a table, especially when it obviously wasn't busy.

With the open concept in the dining area, and a front row seat to observe the kitchen, I was rather disappointed to see that the kitchen stood around talking far longer than they actually worked on our food. Our food was given to us by a second server and they did not ask if we needed anything else before walking off. Both our plates of pasta were swimming in sauce which initially was a good thing, but we quickly regretted not asking if there was any bread available, a small roll or loaf would have sufficed. At no point in our meal did anyone come to check up on us. My partner and I cleaned our plates and were both still hungry because the portions were actually rather small. We sat with empty plates for far longer than should be acceptable in any restaurant.

My partner had to get up and find a third server in order to get our check. When the gentleman came to the table with a mini Square tablet to take payment, he was struggling to get a reciept clipped to a tiny clipboard. I noted in his server apron that he had a server book which made the first server look pretentious. I felt bad for this gentleman becaise he was simply doing his job, which no one else in this establishment seemed to know how to do even though his nervousness and seemingly flustered appearance suggested he was the newest of the people we had interacted with for the night.

The true nail in the coffin for the night was when this server tried asking if we would like to order any dessert. Even though I had been looking forward to the tiramisu I had to decline so as to not have even more poor service.

Of the 4 people we interacted with and 2 others I had observed, there was seemingly zero dress code for anyone, there was no uniformity among the team. Our original server wore all black with a very nice blouse seeming to suggest a bussiness casual dress. The person who served us our food dressed a little more casual but wore a light grey cross body bag; which gave me the impression that the staff had no safe place to put their personal belongings and also that dresscode was truly casual. The poor server who we had to flag down for our check was also dressed appropriately in all black but this time wore a server apron (the half apron around the waist with pockets in it) which was the only way to distinguish his position from the rest, and I observed one other lady dressed similarly also with an apron. There was a gentleman who I can guess was a manager who wore a green satin dress shirt and a set of keys jingled on his belt. I observed another food runner who wore a plaid button down shirt, and khaki cargo shorts which also suggested truly...

This was such a disappointing visit. We had made a reservation for 8 online and saw it was for outdoor. Immediately after making the reservation I called the restaurant and spoke with someone I believe was named DK, seeing if there was any way we could be moved inside since we had two small children under the age of 2. He said they were booked but he would see what he could do. After waiting on the phone he informed me that he was able to make it work and our reservation had been updated so we could be inside. I had thanked him and confirmed the changes were made and he reassured me. When we arrived for our reservation we were told our table was ready outside. I had let the hostess known the conversation had over the phone and she immediately went to get her manager. The manager informed us that he was not aware of any changes and said that they wouldn’t be able to accommodate us inside since they were completely booked and said they would try to make it work. I let him know the entire reason we needed an indoor table was for the two children with us because we didn’t want to sit outside at 6:30pm in the Texas heat. He said he understood and would do whatever he could to make us comfortable outside. I will say the manager was able to find a fan and set it up outside but with the sun setting right on us in July heat it didn’t do anything. The food was fine. But as we are waiting and eating, we have a view inside the restaurant and there are tables open at least an hour and a half into our meal and even as we finished eating. The manager did try to help but the last time we saw him was when he set up the fan. He didn’t come back to check in on the table for the rest of our visit. I had come in from San Antonio to eat here with friends for my birthday because we saw the amazing reviews but we left hot, sweaty, uncomfortable and highly disappointed by the...

We tried out this new spot after seeing it on IG. We made a reservation for my husband's birthday (which I did mention in the reso - "no scene, but a 'happy birthday' from the host or server would be nice"). We were seated right away. Our server was attentive and helped with our wine selection. She also made recommendations on the pastas. Overall, she was helpful and friendly. We skipped the apps and went straight for salads and pasta. Our salads arrived, and while they were as ordered, we were surprised there was no offer of fresh pepper. Then the pasta arrived. I asked the food runner for a spoon to go with the long noodles. I was surprised one wasn't provided with the dish. The server came to check on us and asked if we needed any extra parm, red pepper flakes or FRESH PEPPER. We said no, but that we had requested a spoon, as the spoon arrived by the runner. The server said something that we honestly didn't hear, and then returned a few seconds later with cheese, pepper flake and a pepper mill. ? Overall we thought she must not have heard us correctly. No biggie. The pasta was delicious. I had the spaghetti with kale pesto and the chopped wedge (fyi, this is not a traditional chopped salad, but rather a wedge plated like a regular salad), and my husband had the rigatoni alla norma and a caesar. When asked if we would like dessert, I explained that although it was his birthday we had both reached our limit, at which point she said "I wish you would have told me!". I said that I did put it on the reservation, but she did not acknowledge this comment. Overall, the food was very good, surprisingly priced and we will definitely return. It's still a new restaurant, only 6 weeks old, so perhaps they'll grow into some of the more polished...