Mr. Ginos Restaurant & Bar — Restaurant in Ely

This place was a bear to find. The sign above the place was burned out and it gives a different name on the door. Not such a good start. However, this place just has to have the best food in town. Interestingly, we had to work to get drinks and wine with dinner, but when we did, they did a great job. The "wine" list may just be several generic names, but the "Chianti" was not some jug wine. It was quite good and went well with the food. I can tell the whole COVID thing has thrown the bar part for a loop. My wife got her drink just fine. I asked for a Manhattan and asked what choices I had for a top shelf drink. They said they had some Booker's. Great. When it came, it was pretty small and even though it was in a cocktail glass, there was some ice placed in it as though it was kind of on the rocks. Weird. When I tasted it, it was strong, and I didn't taste any real sweet vermouth flavor, or bitters. The drink was made by our server, and I asked what was in it, and he said the right things. I was thrown off. I'm going through this because it has an interesting ending. This appears to be a pretty standard red sauce Italian joint. In Ely, you only expect so much. Then, they started bringing the food. The calamari appetizer was very lightly breaded and not overcooked at all. It was a pleasure. The pasta dishes were properly al dente. The shrimp never overcooked. Everything was a pleasure. The real treat was dessert. They had cannolis. These were not huge things that are getting soggy. They don't stuff them with ice cream. This is a proper cannoli. I don't think I've had one of those since being in Manhattan, and that's been years. It was a perfect end to a meal. But it got better. I just couldn't let the Manhattan thing go. I asked if he used high proof Bourbon instead of regular Bourbon. He said he wasn't sure. It was the end of the bottle and he went over to the bar and looked. I had almost fogotten Booker's is all cask strength. I have some at home, and it's strong. Sure enough, it's 126 proof. That will throw off any drink. It may not have tasted standard, but it was very good. It was a $90 a bottle Bourbon. I'd come back in a second. They...

This place should be on both Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares and Bar Rescue. This place has some of the worst service that I have ever had. A while back my family and I went to eat here. It wasn’t busy. There were a few parties dining but not what I’d call a dinner rush. I didn’t catch the waiter’s name because he didn’t introduce himself but he was a larger man with black gloves on. He gave us waters and took our orders. We ordered drinks, an appetizer, salads, and our meals. He brought out our appetizer but not our drinks. We had to go find him and ask for those as he didn’t come back to check on us. We found him just blankly staring out into space. Then after about 45 minutes we had to find him AGAIN, to ask for our salads (he forgot 2 of them by the way.) Again, starring off into space. Right after we got our salads, he brought out our food, which was cold. I ordered an overpriced bland steak. He didn’t offer to refill drinks or ask if we needed anything, he just disappeared. After this less than mediocre meal was finished we had to go find him for our check. Once again he was just standing there starring blankly into space.

A few weeks later we decided to give it another try. The busser greeted us and sat us promptly and gave us waters. I saw the man with the gloves again and guess what he was doing? Our server ended up being a younger man with a mohawk who looked like he hadn’t slept for days. There were five parties dining that night. I looked at the table beside me and noticed that they were waiting to order and looked they had been waiting a while judging by the scowls on their faces. We then proceeded to stare at our menus for another 30 minutes while mohawk guy ran around and gloves guy stared at nothing with his mouth open. Seeing that the table before us was still waiting to order, we left.

Not going back...

I have never walked out of a restaurant before after being seated at the table until this one. We had a mini family reunion and chose Ely because it was the half way point for all that had to travel. We had stopped at a different restaurant but the wait for our party of eleven was over an hour and the kids wouldn't have lasted that long so we started calling around and we had been told they had the room and I told the gentleman on the phone we would be there in 10 min. When we got to the restaurant another large party walked in as we all parked our cars. I went in to get seated and the guy who greeted us at the door tried to turn us away but I explained we had called and had been told it was fine and he reluctantly sat us but at different tabels. When we asked if we could put them together he said no because we didn't make a reservation and he walked off. When we saw who our actual server was we asked again and he was very polite and said we could. When the other gentleman returned with water and silverware he was quite rude about us moving the tables as he put the waters down and left. As we sat stunned by the rudeness we started to notice over half our party had things floating in the waters and the silverware was dirty and this was a place more expensive than any Italian place I had been. We all made the decision to leave and not spend any money there so we left $10 on the table for the waters. We explained to the server what happened as we were leaving so he knew it had nothing to do with his service but the extremely rude gentleman that lost them a large party and gained a bad review. If I could give zero stars I absolutely would. Absolutely the worst situation I have ever experienced in...