Stella's — Restaurant in Dana Point

Congratulations to Stella's for earning my very first 1 star review, you deserve it! Dinner reservations were made through yelp and the confirmation was received. Our party showed up right on time but that's where it went off the rails. Neither the hostesses, nor the owner (I'm assuming he was anyways) could find our reservation in the system, so I showed them my email confirmation. The initial response was "It didn't go through". Heh? While they were standing there befuddled, another party came in with apparent reservations for 6:30 as well. The same guy (again, I believe the owner) told them he had written them down for 5:30 so they were too late. The party was adamant about it being at 6:30, which is why they showed up at...6:30. The guy at the desk responded "I'm not going to argue with you but I have 5:30". How's that for customer service! He offered to sit them in a place called the "pizza bar" whatever that was. Yes, we were still standing there, and with actual proof of reservations. Apparently, the other party was not very happy with the arrangements as "shame on you" came from one of them as they stormed out. The owner came back to us and gave us the fantastic option of waiting an hour. No apology, and no effort to make things right in any way. It was basically what he gave the other party, you're SOL. Obviously, we left and went somewhere else. We enjoy dining out and trying new places all the time. This was our first time at Stella's and it will be the last. The dining experience is a combination food, service, and ambiance. Due to absolutely terrible service right at the start, we didn't experience the other two. Attitude comes form the top and this guy's sucked. You can do far better if you're looking for Italian in the area, simply drive a couple of miles up or down PCH...

While the food, itself was good... the service was horrible. I sat down to a dirty bread plate and when I showed it to our waiter, Neal, he just looked at it. No apology, no "let me get you a clean plate"... nothing. Which pretty much illustrated his attitude the whole night. The wine we chose off the menu was not available. He never shared any of the specials... which we overheard shared with an ajoining table by a different, more attentive, waiter to his guests. We ended up with a different bottle of wine, that we chose on our own... with no suggestion from our friend Neal. And we ended up pouring it ourselves the whole night because Neal was nowhere to be found. Did I mention that Neal looked like he just rolled out of bed, complete with a stained shirt and a binder clip for a tie clasp... yes, a literal binder clip. It was our anniversary. But when Neal brought out the less than stellar "Happy Anniversary" cannoli plate, once again, he "wowed us" with his underwhelming personality. The dude is either the owner's son... or he just doesn't want to be there. Either way, he needs to go. On a brighter note, the sax music by Gary King was wonderful and never too loud to enjoy dinner conversation in a small space. Oh, and the "ocean view" was like the State Farm commercial... ocean "adjacent". The patio overlooks the parking lot and trash bins.... with the ocean in the background. All in all, a completely underwhelming...

All around not great. We had reservations on a Saturday night. We arrived about 20 minutes before our reservation, however 2 of our party of 4 wee arriving a little later. However we checked in and were told our table was on the sidewalk outside of the dentists office next door and we could sit down. We waited a few minutes for the other 2 in our party to show up, but decided to sit when they texted us and told us they were less than 5 minutes away. The hostess then walks out and brings us 1 menu and 1 wine list. I expected her to come out with the additional 3 menus when the rest of our party arrived, but she never did. Our server, who seemed as if he had just woken up from a nap arrived and takes our order. But had to come back to the table on at least 2 occasions to confirm our order. Our food arrives, and it was very sub-par. 2 of us got the spaghetti bolognese, and it was TERRIBLE. The meatballs were obviously non homemade.... They were clearly purchased frozen and were like 2 hard little golf balls sitting on my pasta. The sauce tasted very bland. The lasagna had burned pasta noodles in the bottom and seemed to have the consistency of something that was cooked previously and then Frozen and then reheated in a microwave Really a nice looking restaurant from what we saw from outside the dentists office, but the food and service...