Stella's — Restaurant in De Pere

11/10/17 was our first visit to Stella's. We had been to SALT previously and had great experiences, so our expectations were a bit high.

The atmosphere is rather nice, slightly posh in the dinning area and more pedestrian in the bar area. This was a rare night without kids, so we chose the dining area. They seated us immediately, which was great. But it's one of those places where they squeeze tables in and you're less than an arms length away from other tables. I find this incredibly awkward. But, whatever.

The server was awesome. My wife ordered a salad and I ordered the lasagna.

Food was presented within a very acceptable time. If I had to rate the place up to this point, it would be 4 stars.

The first thing we noticed is the salad was less than a handful of sprouts and not fit for a meal at all. This is being a little picky, but it would've been nice if the server had mentioned that.

My lasagna came in one of those elongated bowl things. I attempted to cut a part out and the whole thing sort of gushed to the other side. This was not like any lagna I've ever had before. It was really more of a cheesy soup than anything. I literally had difficulties keeping any of it on my fork without draining through it. It was very tempting to request a spoon. While the flavor wasn't bad at all, it also wasn't very good. Sort of a bland mix of cheese with a tiny bit of meat and a couple of noodles, some of which were left exposed over the side of the dish and over cooked.

We wound up eating again after this meal, the portions were very small. Especially compared to every other Italian place I've ever been.

The food we ordered was extremely disappointing. However, we did see a number of other people with what looked like awesome dishes. Again, the service was above average. Given our past experiences at SALT, we will probably give this place another shot. But based on this first visit, I'm very hesitant to recommend it to others before having a good...

It has been a few years since we have eaten at Stella’s, with the last time not being too impressed with their dishes, but we decided to try them again.

For drinks we all had a whiskey rye old fashioned sweet, which was very good. Love that they muddle them here.

Appetizer consisted of the calamari which is lightly breaded and then served with a remoulade. The batter that was used looked like it was going to be flavorful but it was actually quite bland. The remoulade appeared to be made with a ground mustard and came across tart and unfortunately didn’t pair well together.

Entrees ordered were the pasta Alfredo with blacken chicken added, cedar plank salmon, a big salad, and then the daily special which was cod oscar.

The pasta Alfredo with blacken chicken, it’s sauce was to tight and broken, but flavored well. The chicken was definitely blackened and had good flavor.

The cedar plank salmon had an orange sherry reduction and was served with fries (as a request) and lemon Parmesan brussel sprouts. The salmon was cooked perfectly but did not have any seasoning other than the glaze which was good but lacked something. The brussel sprouts were unfortunately were past the point of having a nice char and were more burned. The fries were thin cut potato wedges, which were fried great and lightly seasoned.

The salad was just a basic salad consisting of romaine, tomatoes and cucumber accompanied by buttermilk ranch on the side.

The cod Oscar was cod that had a hollandaise sauce with lump crab meat on top and was served with rice pilaf and grilled asparagus. Half of the cod was cooked well, the other half was over cooked and dry. The hollandaise sauce was well seasoned. The rice pilaf was under seasoned and very bland. The asparagus was grilled really good. It had a nice char on it and was super tender.

Our server was very quick, attentive and was great at their job.

Give us a follow @gbdiningdykes...

This past Valentine’s Day, my husband made reservations for us at Stella’s. They called us 1 hour before our reservation time to tell us they overbooked and needed to cancel or move our reservation several hours. We chose to cancel. We decided tonight to give them another try…

I’ll start with the positive and say Kaitlyn was a very friendly server. Extremely polite and smiley.

We had a 7pm reservation. We arrived a little after 6 and sat at the bar for a couple drinks. At 6:40, we inquired about our table (there were several empty tables). Didn’t get seated until 7:10.

Kaitlyn brought us menus and informed us all of the specials were sold out except 1. We ordered an app right away, which did not arrive until 7:45. Bruschetta. It was good, but a 35 minute wait for an app is a bit much (there were no check-ins to apologize for the wait or anything like that).

Finally got our food (I had a salad and my husband had a pasta) at 8:06pm. My salad consisted of browning iceberg lettuce (supposedly romaine), cherry tomatoes, a couple slices of cucumber and 4 shrimp. The shrimp were good. I was charged $23 for this otherwise pathetic salad that took nearly an hour to receive. The lobster Mac my husband had tasted very good.

We overheard the waitress telling the table next to us that they were out of the lobster mac as well now. There was also a 3% service charge tacked onto our bill that the waitress explained was to cover the cost of having the ingredients delivered to the restaurant. Isn’t that what the markup on your menu prices is meant to cover?

Highly unimpressed. No, Kaitlyn, it is not your fault. You did just fine with the hand...