Smitty's Italian Steakhouse — Restaurant in Evansville

We went to Smitty’s steakhouse before a comedy show with some friends that were celebrating their anniversary. We arrived at ~4:45pm and were told there would be about a 30 minute wait. There were tons of open tables, so plenty of room inside to wait, but we were instead steered to stand outside or huddle by the door with the others waiting. Unfortunately, this is during the first heatwave of the summer so it was a miserable wait. It was made more unbearable by taking an hour to be seated.

At this point we aren’t unhappy. We understand that places are understaffed sometimes and have tables they won’t use, even if it means forcing customers outside to stand on a hot side walk.

For the final 10 minutes or so of waiting for our table we stand by the host’s desk and pray we get called. It’s as this time we realize this restaurant has very little air conditioning. The very slight breeze outside was almost preferable (ALMOST) to the stagnant air inside the restaurant. This is when we start to get frustrated on a level of many 2 out of 10. We budgeted 2 hours to eat to still make it to our show on time and all should have still been well.

However that was before we were finally seated and ordered our food at the same time we got drinks to help speed things up, and it still took a solid 45 minutes for someone to check on us and tell us there was a mix up in the kitchen. Then 10-15 minutes later the more expensive meals came out, but my wife’s appetizer didn’t make it yet. When we reminded them we had at this point been there for nearly 2 hours and had a show to attend; that’s when the waitress offered to box my wife’s food up so we could take it with us.

I couldn’t believe the remorse for absolutely atrocious service and making us late to a show was to box up chicken tenders and let us eat them at the Ford Center.

Also, on a side note I got to watch a guy do silverware wrapping at the front, with dirty hands (from touching everything else) and speaking with people that came in to check on the wait that would lean over the clean silverware to speak to him. Dirty.

The steak I ordered was very decent. A solid 6 or 7 out of 10. The chicken that made us late was also solid for chicken wings, but there’s no doubt I’d rather get McDonalds than spend another 2 hours at Shitty’s...

2nd worst restaurant service ever. Wait was about 15 minutes which wasn't too bad. Once we were seated we waited approximately 15 minutes until another server took our drink order and said our waitress was busy with a big table. I knew what that meant and started timing our visit. A minute after that our real server asked for our drink order. We told her we ordered that already but we were ready to order food. So we did. 20 minutes later I recieved my wine and salad. It wasn't until 46 minutes after the salad I recieved my steak. In our time waiting for our food, a table sat down and paid for their meal and left before we even had our meal brought to us. At a steakhouse you'd think they know how to cook. I ordered medium. The steak came out burnt to a crisp and was black when I cut into the center. I asked for the manager and he brought back another steak. This time the steak had grill Mark's but when cut into, it was bleeding severly, more like a rare steak would. The manager took the steak back and brought it back a few minutes later. Still being about medium rare, I told him I'd just eat the steak as we have been waiting 1 hour 30 minutes since we sat down. It took me 10 minutes to eat the steak. The manager was very polite and offered us a desert, but I did not want to wait for another 15 minutes to get that so I politely declined. By the time we paid our bill 1 hour and 41 minutes had gone by. No compensation for the extremely poor service was offered on the bill. Our drinks were left unfilled for the majority of the time. Very disappointed for a first time here with such an expensive steak menu. I was not pleased with the service and do not plan on returning. The picture I am posting is my third "medium" steak along with my timer which I started after the 15 minute wait until a different server took our...

Love the old building and the architecture. Food was good, just shy of great. I had the rigatoni and Italian sausage. Companion had lasagna. We both shared bruchetta.

Bruchetta was good but I think the tomatoes had a bit much balsamic vinegar on them? Something was giving it an odd twang. My minestrone soup was good and obviously homemade. The sauce on my rigatoni was a little sweet but otherwise great. I ate the whole thing and it was a huge plate of pasta and two whole Italian sausages on top. Companion couldn't finish his huge chunk of lasagna but said it was excellent. Tiramisu for dessert was very tasty.

Definitely will go back. Really want to try the steak but the Italian options are so tasty.

UPDATE: Me and companion definitely picked the wrong night to come here. It was early Saturday, around 4:30, so we got right in. It took 10 minutes to take our drink order and other 10 to get them. We ordered...and then it got odd. Our poor server fell down and had a seizure not 15 feet from our table. She eventually had to wheeled to an ambulance. I do hope she's ok. And here begins the challenge: we waited another 20 minutes with no food or refills before I went up front and said, "I really don't know the etiquette for this but that was our server that was just carried out...and no one else has been by our table, so..." That did the trick as our food came out a couple of minutes later (cold, as with all the excitement it was left in the window for a while). We never got any refills and I finally had to go up 20 minutes later and ask for our check...which was wrong...I had one receipt with $48 (right) and another for $102. The manager came up and straightened it out but our entire visit was...