Cattivella — Restaurant in Denver

The following is what I sent to Cativella directly, but they never responded, so I'm posting here:

Good evening.

Instead of leaving a review online, I wanted to reach out to talk about our dining experience last night.

I will start by saying I have dined with Cativella in the past and was so impressed that yesterday my best friend and I chose it to celebrate some great news we had gotten. Unfortunately, it was far from what we had experienced in the past.

We had reservations and were seated outside by a wonderful host. Our server brought plates and silverware and another person brought us water. We started with 6 oysters and a couple of cocktails. There was something extremely off about the second oyster I ate. It was mealy and squishy. That put me off the rest of the oysters, though I do not know if any others were like that (the first one was great). The service was the real problem. There were long waits in between seeing our server and several mistakes were made. We were brought sgagliozze twice about 20 minutes apart (each time by a different person, not our server), there was a mix up with one of the cocktails, and the pacing was really off. But, the reason I was compelled to write to you is that I ordered a glass of wine with my dinner (the rabbit gnocchi). Our food came out very fast (brought by another person). My wine did not come. I waited to eat my food until I had my wine. The server did not come to check on us until about 30 minutes after our meal came. I had not eaten anything. She asked how everything was and I said I would like my glass of wine. She left and yet another person brought me a glass of wine, which was not the kind I had asked for (it was white and I wanted a red, though I cannot remember what it was now). I did not send it back and did drink it, but my food was cold at that point and it was starting to sprinkle outside. Therefore, we asked another passing person if they could bring us boxes for our food. We got the boxes and waited for our server. Another 30 minutes passed before she returned and she realized we had boxes. We got the check and paid.

$162 for a dinner that I ate 1 oyster and 3 bites of sgagliozze washed down with a glass of white wine I didn't want. Though I was not vocal or rude, it was pretty clear I was unhappy and had not eaten, but our server said nothing in the way of explanation, apology, or kindness. It really put a damper on what was supposed to be a joyous evening.

Seeing as how Cativella has been great to me in the past, I did not want to blast this on Google reviews or Facebook. But, every service counts and I wanted you to know. Have a wonderful rest of your evening and thank you for taking the time to read...

I’ll start by saying my first time trying this restaurant was on a Saturday during Restaurant Week. At $35 for four courses , it was too good a deal not to try! I love Italian food, but this is definitely not the best. The staff was very nice and surprisingly my favorite part of the meal were the cocktails! I’ll start with course 1. We got the focaccia (okay) and calamari. The calamari was good but both plates were pretty cold by the time they got to us. We waited for a while to get our main course (they completely missed our second course) and so we essentially ate course 2 and 3 together. Our waitress did apologize and we understood they were busy. We had the tomato bisque soup and Caesar salad. The soup was brought out cold, and the salad was standard. Our main course was the gnocchi and the other meatballs. The gnocchi was our favorite, although pretty oily. The meatballs were good. For our 4th course, I was very much looking forward to the lavender Crème brûlée, but the kitchen ran out and our waitress substituted without telling us. We received the chocolate brownie with vanilla ice cream in its place. I didn’t care for the actual taste of the brownie and ate a couple bites of the ice cream before passing it off. The tiramisu was nice, and to be expected from the dessert. About an hour after we got home, our stomachs started hurting pretty bad, and I’m not sure if it came from too much dairy, the food sitting too long since a majority came out cold, or if I need to have my gut health checked* I would probably go back during a less busy time and get a cocktail and try the pizza. I always rate a restaurant if I would be proud to take out of town guests to eat there, and I have to say I would take them to Cholon before this place. In my opinion it wasn’t the best but it was good. * In the pic you can see the soup is cold that the cream is just sitting in the middle. My gnocchi is very oily. * Our meal with drinks plus a little more than a 25% tip was...

Disappointing.. truly.

I brought my wife and 4 year old daughter here on a Friday evening today. Very busy. We were seated immediately. Great. Ordered food quickly, fried polenta app, tortellini with meatball, and the buffalo mozz pizza. Got my wine and then proceeded to wait 15 minutes for our fried polenta. Which was good. Then they took our plates away and didn't give us new ones or new cutlery.

Then we waited another nearly 40 minutes. Nobody even acknowledges our presence. The server never came back to check on us. Finally we asked where our food was and it was promptly delivered. Pizza was literally soup in the middle. It was so wet that we just cut the center out and ate the crust ( with a knife we had to ask for). Tortellini was 4 pieces of small pasta buried in meat sauce. Honestly, the Tortellini was good. Nowhere near worth $28, though

I like food. I dont complain often. When I go out I expect at least some decent service to go with my expensive food. Maybe it was just an off night, or my server was put in a bad situation with too many to serve. In that case at least a recognition I'd it would have been nice.

All of this was made worse by the fact that we asked if they had a pizza that was like pepperoni that would be okay for my daughter. They said they were out. People were behind us, seated and eating their pepperoni pizza minutes after arriving. We were nice, my daughter was very well behaved. We didn't make a fuss. We aren't those people.

So we are sitting for 30 or 40 extra minutes watching everybody around us seated after us get their food that we were told was no longer available.

Ruined our...