North Italia — Restaurant in Dunwoody

My wife and I had a nightmare experience at this restaurant on 02-10-2023 starting at 5:00pm. We made a reservation earlier and asked for one of the booths next to the windows for comfort of my back and a little more quietness. The girl taking the reservation said that would be fine. When we got there, we saw 4 of the booths were empty and asked for one of them. The hostess seemed at a loss as to how to make that happen. She went and got the manager and had a long conversation with him as to how they could solve this apparently complex and difficult task. The hostess then said we could have one of the non-booth tables and I asked again for one of the booths. She had further conversations with another person and then we were led into the Bar and seated very close to 2 tables with kids (we had told her we wanted a booth in the more quieter section). There were plenty of booths open around the restaurant.

Next, we waited a very long time before anyone came to our table. Then we waited a very long time to get glass of water and tea. then we waited a very long time to get our cocktails. Then we waited a very, very long time to get our entrees. My wife ordered a cup of soup and was served a bowl of soup. I asked for red Maraschino cherries with my drink and was served dark cherries buried under lot of ice and irretrievable. We asked for some olive oil to dip our bread into 3 times over a long time before we finally got it. I asked for extra dressing on the side for my salad twice and after a long time finally got it after I gave up and finished my salad. We asked an assistant manager if she could set the room temperature warmer as we were freezing from cold air pouring down on us and in an unfriendly way said she could change it, but we wouldn't see any difference for 45 minutes.

After we finished our entrees, our server disappeared. We wanted to order deserts, but for a very long time our server was nowhere to be found. The manager happened by and asked if everything was going well and I informed him of the terrible experiences we were having and we couldn't get anyone to take our desert order. He handed a desert menu to my wife but not one to me. He took our orders and I requested no almond nuts on my chocolate desert if possible. He said that would be no problem. It turns out he didn't know that almonds were ground and in the desert already. At this point, I told him we wanted no desert and to get us the check immediately as we wanted to just get out of this terrible place as soon as possible. We waited and waited and waited and waited. Finally the server came over and I told her we had been waiting a long time for the check and she said they were working on it (these are very technically-challenged people). When I told the manager how incompetent and unprofessional the restaurant staff was, his answer was to pay for desert - which we were not going to have. We weren't trying to get anything for free. His answer should have been " I am sorry for the bad experience you have had and I will take the necessary actions to ensure this never happens again." From the manager on down, these people are incompetent and existing in La-La land. They don't get it. They don't listen, they don't focus on their job and they are not very bright. We will never waste another cent on this awful place. In fairness to the whole experience, the food was excellent, when we finally got...

Came here for the first time tonight (11/12, 5 pm reservation) with my girlfriend for my birthday dinner after hearing great things about it on social media.

We were seated and ordered drinks and appetizers (buratta and garlic bread) and our waitress said “Oh we’re actually out of the garlic bread tonight” so I thought okay fine, no big deal, kinda weird to already be out of something this early but whatever. 15–20 mins later we’re still waiting on the appetizer (again no big deal we’re not getting impatient or anything) and our waitress comes over to see if we want to just go ahead and order. Girlfriend orders the butternut squash, I order the short rib pasta “We’re out of that” the spicy rigatoni “We’re also out of that” and finally the bolognese. A few minutes go by and our waitress comes back to say they’re actually out of the butternut squash as well, so my girlfriend orders the chicken parmesan, “Great, we’ll have that right out for you”. Another 10 or so minutes pass and our waitress comes back with another menu and a printed out receipt of every menu item currently unavailable, “We’re out of the sauce for the chicken parm as well.” For reference, the list of unavailable items was nearly every single pasta dish, multiple appetizers, and several entrees. It has now been 45 minutes since we’ve been seated and we haven’t even been able to get our order in because of having to play this back and forth ordering game lol.

The food that we did end up getting (prosciutto pizza and bolognese) was very good, no complaints there. I have no doubts in the kitchen staff and their ability to prepare good food.

Look, I get it, it’s clear from a history of mostly positive reviews that this was very much a fluke, off night, which every restaurant will invariably have. Trucks don’t come when they’re supposed to, fridges and kitchen equipment fail, sometimes the inventory manager just messes up, and that’s just going to happen sometimes.

My issue isn’t with the fact that they were out of a bunch of stuff, it’s the frankly abysmal job on the part of management and the waitstaff of acknowledging and setting expectations. All you had to do was, as soon as each party is seated “Hey, unfortunately we’ve had a supply chain mixup and we’re running low on a few key ingredients. Here’s a printed list of all available (or unavailable) dishes.” Efficient, easy, a little disappointing, but still great food. 4/5 stars. Instead it was a near hour long cat and mouse game trying to just simply order something that was available, without ever even being given a simple explanation as to why 75% of the menu was unavailable.

Also, sitting in proximity to a spot where staff were congregating, it was pretty telling to hear a server tell her manager that a table wanted to speak with a manager about that exact situation, and for the manager to essentially say “That’s not my problem, idk what they wanna talk to me about, I’m not going...

Food was delicious, prices didn't match portion sizes, but it was good quality. The spicy broccolini and the meatballs with polenta were delicious, no one complained about their dish. We ordered everything from salad to pasta to pizza. The chef board was beautiful too.

I would not recommend a large group come here. They were not prepared and we even had a reservation. I would not take hungry teenage boys here either, they will leave hungry and you will leave with a small dent in your pocket book. My son got back to our hotel and ate whatever snacks I brought with us because he was still so hungry.

Service was lacking big time at this location. They were very friendly, just incredibly slow. We did have a large group of maybe 20 or so people, about 5 families. When we do this as a group, we have a system that works very well. We do this every time our team goes to dinner together. They did not understand what we were suggesting, did it their own way, and messed up our bills so terribly. Several dishes were added to the wrong bill. We just settled up with each other at that point because we had been held hostage long enough. They also had no idea what dish went to which person when the food came out. It was pure chaos and no one even changed seats.

On top of that, they hardly checked on us. Water was refilled one time. I had a piece of plastic in my food, but by the time someone came back to check on us, it was too late to replace it, we had already been there way longer than necessary so I just asked for it to come off the bill. They did that with zero issue, and even offered free dessert but I declined. They were very apologetic about it. It get it, things happen. I wasn't mad it was in there. Hard to see something like that in a meatball until you cut it open.

Took FOREVER just to get waters to the table so I just ordered my cocktail at the bar which was astronomical in price for a simple aperol spritz. It was good, but not $19 good (that included a $3 tip).

In the end, they took almost an hour just to bring us our bills! A lot of that time was trying to sort out whatever mess the waiters made on their piece of paper using their "system" that clearly didn't work very well. We were there for two and half hours, and most of that was waiting around for everything from drinks to food, to the bill.

Nice, clean restaurant using quality ingredients but I probably wouldn't go out of my way to go back unless someone I'm with wanted to go. I would definitely not bring my kids here again. It's worth it to try at least once, maybe even more than once but prepare to order more than one item if you want an actual meal that you walk away feeling...