Trattoria Demi — Restaurant in Evanston Township

I have worked in Evanston for a year and this WAS my favorite place that I ordered from at times once a week sometimes more! Until TODAY!!! I order the same dish all of the time... Rigatoni Ricotta. If I dine in I must say the lunch special for the Rigatoni Ricotta is pretty good it is just a little small of a size. For some reason every time I order the same dish to go, which is double the price, it is always really dry and the noodles taste under cooked. Today I finally called the manager and told him and the response I got was do I want to pick up some sauce. Now, please keep in mind, this dish is a baked dish: sauce, noodles, cheeses, etc. When I asked isn't the sauce supposed to be baked with the pasta, as we all know this does make a difference in taste, he said yes. Which in return my response was than "NO" I do not want to pick up sauce (I would have ordered spaghetti). He than said well let me ask my cooks. He came back on the line and told me they put the same amount of sauce they always put. I then said well than I just will not be ordering this dish ever again, his response was okay thank you have a nice day. I just spent $14 on a lunch that is not going to be eaten my day is not good anymore and I will never go back there. In regards to decorations for this establishment, this is a very small restaurant that the seats are a little too close for comfort. If you want an afternoon snack at a high price for such I recommend this location. If you would like a dinner size for dining in or to go save your money and time! Very upset customer! I will gladly bring my business to other restaurants in the area, there are plenty that will not ignore a customer and will value their...

Made a reservation for 9pm using the restaurant's online reservation system. We showed up at 9:04 and they tell us the kitchen is closed. Doesn't bother to call us, they told us they assumed we weren't coming (which is...odd). They claimed they closed the kitchen and cleaned everything up. As the customer, I was expected to believe that, in 4 minutes, you shut down your kitchen to the point of no service, even though you saw that you had a 9pm reservation in your system? I can't help but feel like, as a black woman with her black boyfriend, that there were other underlying reasons for denying us service. Even if we had shown up at 9pm sharp, how do you close your kitchen enough to not have ANY service?

And, who I assume was the manager, literally shruged her shoulders and gave a flippant apology, if you could even classify it as such. No offer to provide us another reservation, just dismissed. Clearly, they are just rude for no reason, and after reading several reviews, it seems like poor service is their specialty.

Overall, a simple call would've been nice because if I had driven far to get here, I would have been VERY upset. If you can't honor 9pm reservations when your restaurant closes at 9:30, then have reservations close at 8:30/8:45 in your system. It's THAT simple. Rather than wasting people's time. Overall, it is very poor management. Shame how they treat customers. I really hope they see this review to see how rude their behavior was, because there's no way they can think the way they handle reservations...

Disappointing experience. Service was fine, even if our server and the rest of the floor seemed in the weeds. No complaints there.

However, the food is mediocre at best. Order the stuffed gnocchi w/ vodka sauce, which came with a hair in the sauce, always a nice touch. The gnocchi and sauce were nothing to get excited over, the chicken parm that came with it was over cooked, chicken was tough, and cheese was rubber.

You wouldn’t think butter, garlic, wine, and lemon would be hard to mess up, but the shrimp scampi was another weak dish. Granted, the shrimp was cooked well and the pasta was al dente, but the sauce was basically lemon soup, and it seems like they don’t understand the purpose of pasta starch and its use to thicken and emulsify sauces. The sauce was split, butter floating on top of a lemon concoction.

The only thing less enjoyable than the food is the atmosphere. This has to be one of the loudest restaurants I’ve experienced, and they don’t even play music which is often the cause. I wish I was exaggerating. The space would greatly improve with a small investment in acoustic treatment, even some DIY rockwool panels would be a great help. You literally have to shout to place an order and talk to the person across the table.

I wish I could say better things about this restaurant. Perhaps it was an off night, but it won’t be...