Mariana's — Restaurant in Florida

Tonight we ordered 2 chicken marsala dinners and 1 lasagna. Chicken Marsala, according to their menu, is "served with garlic mash." The dinners are also served with your choice of salad or soup, we chose salad; all 3 with blue cheese. after 45 minutes, our dinner arrived, except no garlic mashed potatoes and no blue cheese dressing. I contacted the restaurant and spoke with the manager, April, who offered a $10 credit, which I politely declined asking if we could please just get the garlic mashed potatoes and the 3 blue dressings we had originally ordered. She agreed and seemed nice about it. that phone call was at 7:35. we live roughly 1-1.5 miles from the restaurant, so at 8:10, when our food was cold, I called again to ask when the rest of our food would be delivered because it had been over 30 mins and our dinner was now cold. I was told "I believe he left already," again I am about 3-4 minutes from the restaurant. 15 minutes later the guy arrived with the remaining of our dinner. Yah! we can finally eat an hour and a half later! NOT! Theres only 1 side of blue cheese dressing, theres supposed to be 3 sides because we have 3 salads! I take a bite of my cold chicken with my hot LUMPY mashed potatoes only to find that I don't taste garlic AND those LUMPS were potato flakes!! These potatoes were INSTANT MASHED POTATOES that I just waited an hour and a half for! I paid $15 per dinner for cold chicken and FAKE MASHED POTATOES! I immediately contacted the restaurant and asked for a manager. to my surprise, Tom, the owner got on the phone. Tom had no problem letting me know that the potatoes were in fact, INSTANT! He also proceeded to tell me that "$15 for chicken marsala is cheap, I'm getting ready to raise the prices" WHAT? I told him that I just spent $50 on food that was cold and instant mashed potatoes and that as a business owner myself, I couldn't imagine not making my customers a priority. Tom then says "Yeah, im probably gonna take them off the menu and im from up north so I know sarcasm when I hear it." I told him well, im from down south where they serve REAL garlic mashed potatoes when you spend $15 a plate, If you need me to come teach you how to make real garlic mashed potatoes id be more than happy too. Then Tom proceeds to tell me that if I would like to come in and have a conversation with him, he would give me a $50 gift certificate. Tom, sir, the second I stated INSTANT MASHED POTATOES and COLD FOOD and waited an HOUR AND A HALF and still have yet to receive all of salad dressings for my order; that should've been the first thing out of your mouth!!! what do I need to come have a conversation with you for? I was in the middle of a conversation with you, why do I need to waste my time with another? Seems this new owner, Tom, will be running The Stinky Rose into the ground one order of garlic mashed potatoes and one customer at a time. You never know who you are serving, Sir. We order in lunch for clients very regularly and we are also a family of 8, whose typical dinner order is almost always over $100. You will no longer receive mine, or my business' orders. I strongly suggest you learn to make ALL of you customers a priority, learn to keep your arrogant comments to yourself, and learn to make REAL garlic mashed potatoes. If not, you may end up OUT of business due to YOUR lack of customer service and...

Ah! The unmistakable pungency of a Stinky Rose. Garlic, that is. It's said that the first to call garlic by that name were the Romans.

What's another famous Roman credit? 'When in Rome do as the Romans do'. Following that logic, our motto for this visit would be 'When in Hernando do as the Hernandoans do'!

Our roamin' chariot carried us from Brooksville, along the Forest Ridge to the parapet of Mariana's parking lot. We were cheerfully greeted and seated at a cozy table. La famiglia on this feast quest consisted of yours truly, my Fab One and her two adorable granddaughters. This would be our second visit, but second to none!

Let's dig right in to the food, il cibo! Ladies first, granddaughter #1 chose Gnocchi, the dainty little potato dumplings with the funny name. Gnocchi, topped with a fresh and herby marinara, along with a side choice of Pasta Fagioli soup, all we saw was a lot of spooning! And smiling.

Granddaughter #2 chose a Chicken Bacon Ranch pizza. What an interesting combination, but rightly so for a 13 year old! She was artfully intrigued by the composition of crust laid before her. For this occasional picky eater, we happily watched as she savored each slice!

My Fab One? Oh, it's so hard to please her(I should know?) ...she's a gourmet cook. LOL She opted for a Margherita pizza, with a twist. In addition to the Margherita sauce, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and tomatoes she had them add some spinach. We heard no rants from the kitchen on this request. Instead, they delivered a perfect piping hot pizza pie! I tried some, it was deliziosa!

And now, what did I order? The time tested stamp in my passport of Italian food is lasagna. You lay a luscious lasagna in front of me and I'll call your mama long distance to brag about your cooking prowess! WHERE'S MY PHONE? The lasagna, a la Stinky Rose, brought tears of joy to my elated eyes! This multi-layered meaty marinara, ricotta and pecorino romano masterpiece melted my heart, much like the mozzarella on top. As I dug into this molten cheesy Vesuvius, each trip to my lips was a gloriously inhaled bite! I used up the last bit of our bread to sop up and mop up.

All of these great 'flavorites' were presented to us by the incomparable April. She was there when we needed anything. Service was perfect.

So here we are, at the end of my review. (Yay?) LOL In ANY language, The Stinky Rose speaks fluent good food. With an accent on fresh.... Tell them John & Beth, and those two...

This was our go-to restaurant for a few years. We moved to the other side of the county temporarily and are now back in the area. Its sad that we could tell immediately that there was new ownership. The place was full with only a table or two open but there was only one waitress. They still use the old menus but crossed out and rewrote the new (and higher) prices for many food items. I wish I could write a review of the food but after sitting at a table for 15 minutes and never even having anyone come take our drink order (or even say hello) we asked if they had forgotten about us. The hostess replied "we only have one waitress". Full restaurant and 1 waitress? We decided to go to Angelo's which is just down the street. The previous owners were very successful with lower prices and more staff. Not sure why the new owners are cutting corners. Unfortunately, I dont think theyll last long running the restaurant this way. If they can straighten out the staffing and ensure people arent waiting so long to get orders taken they might have a chance.

Update/Edit: we’ve tried this place a couple more times in the past year just to make sure we didn’t base our opinion off of one bad day. We did get our order taken but I feel the food just isn’t what it used to be...the staff is not nearly as welcoming either. It’s sad that our favorite place is rarely a consideration for us anymore simply because of...