Al Fresco's — Restaurant in Flemington

My boyfriend and I live in the area at tried this place a while back. I remember it being very good at a plus that they had gluten free options. Every time we want to go somewhere to eat and not spend $$$$ in town or eat steak at Longhorn I think of this place. Tonight I knew we would be nearby at going out so I got it in my head that we were eating here. Couldn't remember why we didn't come back...

I was looking forward to a drink with my dinner tonight and noted the bar by the front entrance that didn't seem occupied as if no one comes here to drink. We sit down, my BF says to order him a beer while he uses the restroom.

The server comes over, I ask for a drink menu and apologetically explains they do not serve but it's BYOB and some liquor stores nearby. Sure- we are finally seated at a table to eat dinner- let's pack it in and get back in the car so go drive to the liquor store. Not that we couldn't survive without it I'm searching my mind for a reason why there's absolutely no mention anywhere that is BYOB??

Finally we were ready to order some soft drinks and I wanted a GF menu which is advertised on their site (I was purusing their menu online earlier in the day when I decided I'd like to go there for dinner) and it says specifically "ask about our gluten free menu".

I order my drink at ask to see the gf menu and again a shrug of regret as the server begins to apologize that they don't have one at the moment, but that most everything can be made GF except they can't do the eggplant gf right now.

Am I going to finally pick a meal at you tell me I'm so sorry normally we have that but tonight we're out of that??

It took a really long time for our food to come out. My BF was already tired and wishing he was home already so I was getting antsy watching every time someone popped out from the kitchen to see if they were bringing our food... Worried he'd get impatient and say something about how long it's taking, blah blah.

The food came and it was great. I had to wait about 10 minutes after the food arrived to see our server again and wave him down to get his attention and ask for parmesan cheese. I was going to steal the shaker from the adjacent table who had just left but before I could the waitstaff cleared it all away. The food was delicious, I really was enjoying it and wanted to keep going even though I was full but asked for a little box

The prices weren't horrible and I'd eat there again but man... Did Covid just break people beyond hope?? How hard is it to 1: clearly advertise you're BYOB 2: offer instead cocktails and non alcoholic stuff atleast 3: get a liquor license?? 4: train your staff to be more attentive and check on your customers a occasionally and be sure tables are properly set. 5: invest in some real Parmesan cheese instead of fake stuff in a shaker that won't come out 6: can you print some gluten free menus or some more obvious indicators of what contains...

I actually am a long time customer and will tell you the food is very good. That being said I would not give this place a 4th chance. My first bad experience was going on a Wednesday night at 5:30 and needing to be out of there by 6:45. My wife and I placed our orders and after an hour we still did not have our food. I told the server that it was taking too long and that we had an appointment. I asked to have the order to go and they agreed. 15 minutes later our food comes out on plates as we are getting up to leave. We couldn't even take it with us because we were afraid it would take another 15 minutes to have it boxed. There were approximately 10 guests but I was told they had a large catering order. I didn't go back for a year. My second bad experience was taking out of town business associates there and telling them how good the food was. There was 8 of us at the table and maybe 6 other people at other tables. We were seated and got our drinks and the server took our orders. It was clear that the server was new and spoke very little English. Our lunches came out and 3 of the 8 were incorrect. The 3 people who got the incorrect order decided to keep them as it was too painful to have the waiter understand what the problem was. I didn't go back for 6 months. My last experience and final chance was today. I got there at 12:30 with a business associate. There was a good crowd there and my associate said it may be high school graduation. We placed our orders and after 30 minutes of waiting I noticed that a catering order was being stacked on the table behind us. After 45 minutes I asked the server if we were close to getting our food. At 50 minutes I told our server they would have to make it to go. At 60 minutes a bag was handed to us as we were getting ready to leave. I paid and as I went out to the car I noticed the order was wrong but had no time to have it fixed. I called the Manager and let him know that I was unhappy and he told me that when they are busy and have catering orders they don't have enough staff to service the customers. I advised him that if they couldn't do both that maybe they should close when they have catering jobs. He told me in a condescending tone that he would relay my suggestion...

Haven't made a review in a while, but this place was so abhorrent that I need to warn others. To start the food took over an hour to come out. The appetizer (fried calimari) had little to no flavor and the red sauce that was given was far too sweet (more like ketchup than sauce). On to the main course. It was far from the description. I ordered baked zitti and it wasn't baked. Simply just ziti and that same red sauce and small puddle of cheese on top. Simply not baked zitti. My gf got fettuccine Alfredo. Noodles were weird, and the sauce was so watery that it didn't even stick to the noodles. On top of all this, there were plenty of waiters in the building yet there were times where not a single waiter came out for 15 minutes at a time. They complained about the amount of people there but it was empty when we arrived and our food just waited under a heating lamp for 40+ min. When I asked for the check to just leave and go elsewhere is when they finally brought our sad meal out. We each had a bite and decided that our meals didn't come out right we decided to just leave instead of getting different dishes. After expressing our lack of a good time to our waiter he retrieved our check and didn't take off anything for the completely incorrectly made food. Both with a single bit taken out. So it was a 58 dollar bill for calimari and warm bread.

Tldr: bad food. Bad service. Bad decore. Nothing you'd want from an Italian restraunt. Save your money and eat at home if you're...