Castiglia's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Fredericksburg

We went here for dinner on a Tuesday night, and was overall very underwhelmed by our experience. Firstly, the service was great. Our waiter was timely, conscious, and polite. No complaints there. The complaints mainly came from the food, which, let's be honest, is why you go out to eat. Firstly, the appetizer: Asiago Artichoke dip. The amount of chips they give you belies the amount of actual dip you get. And the dip you DO get, is about 50% cheese on top, leaving about a quarter inch of actual dip on the bottom of a 4-5" round mini skillet (for lack of a better word). The dip itself was actually very good! But it was buried under so much cheese that you couldn't really taste it. We were left with about half our chips left when all was said and done, so the amount of food you got with this appetizer definitely wasn't worth the price point. Secondly, our dinners: Our 4 year old wanted buttered noodles and cheese. Hard to mess that up, but even on that front, there was so much oil in the bottom of the bowl the noodles were swimming halfway through the dish. My wife ordered a simple pepperoni pizza, and there was far FAR too much cheese stuck right in the middle of the pizza, leaving a solid half inch of cheese in the middle. I know some folks like a LOT of cheese, but my wife is addicted to cheese, and it was too much for her. Not to mention how greasy/oily this made the pizza. The best part of the pizza was the back quarter of the slice, but even that was underwhelming with no particular flavor. I chose to try the Burrata and Prosciutto pizza, which had arugula and balsamic glaze drizzled on top. The IDEA of this pizza sounded amazing, and the waiter stated that it was one of their most ordered pizzas. However, the idea and execution are very different. It was a simple cheese (no sauce) pizza baked and sliced with fresh arugula, prosciutto and cherry tomatoes dropped on top afterward with a balsamic glaze drizzle, and a large ball of burrata cheese in the middle. This created...challenges. Trying to separate a piece of this pie from the rest was frustrating, as the fresh arugula dropped on top simply 'grabbed' one another and stripped the toppings off every piece I tried to grab, forcing me to reconstruct my pizza slice on the plate before eating. And the lump of burrata cheese was cold, so it cooled and solidified the pizza where all the pieces come together in the middle, forcing the pieces to tear, exacerbating the already dismal eating experience. On top of that, I was forced to decide how to best 'divvy up' the ball of burrata onto each slice. I opted to just tear it open and scoop some onto the slice. Once I reassembled the slice, the flavor combination was actually good, but again, not really worth the price when I had to work that hard to get all the ingredients reassembled.

If someone from Castiglias reads this, here are my humble recommendations:

Less cheese on the pies (pepperoni, at least) and make sure the cheese is spread out more evenly. For the Burrata/Prosciutto pizza: I would try baking the arugula WITH the pizza, like you would spinach, THEN slicing it, allowing everything to be cut cleanly and allowing the slices to come apart more easily. I would also consider either letting the burrata come up to room temp while the pizza cooks, or even placing it in the middle of the pie toward the end of the bake so it warms up with the pizza, keeping it from prematurely cooling the center of the pizza and making the pieces tear apart. This would also allow the burrata to be sliced with the pie, avoiding having your customers forced to decide how best to spread burrata on pizza after the fact as one mass of cheese. After slicing, you could even just pull the 'slices' of burrata open and spread it up the slice simply and easily.

I'm no professional chef, but I eat a lot of food, and have done more than my fair share of experimentation in the kitchen. But then again, lots of folks work in restaurant kitchens without any formal culinary education, so no...

I’m a little concerned that this staple is going to go out of business very soon if they don’t adjust quickly. We have so many amazing options downtown to choose from and Castiglia’s has now been placed last on my list and I’m sure it’s last on many others. We decided to stop by for Mothers Day brunch… and one of the main reasons is because I knew everywhere else was going to have a very long wait and/or the waitlist wasn’t even available until dinner time. We were seated immediately for a party of 5 which is what I was hoping. The temperature of the restaurant was a little hot and we started to sweat while waiting for the server to come to the table. While we waited for the rest of our party my mother and I decided to place an appetizer order. We ordered mozzarella sticks and fried calamari. I was immediately disappointed because the mozzarella sticks have changed. They were the frozen ones that have absolutely no seasoning in the batter. The last time I was at castiglias in January they were serving these amazing jumbo mozzarella sticks that were fresh and delicious. Why would you take those off and replace those with the grosser of the frozen ones? Don’t get me wrong, I can enjoy frozen mozzarella sticks but these were the ones you would order from a cheap bar or pizza joint with no expectation of quality. The fried calamari tasted extremely fishy and that’s not normal. Overly salted and like they were going bad. I ate one and could not go back for another bite.

Now our meal. We ordered steak and cheese, spaghetti, lobster ravioli, and a strawberry salad. I did put in a to go order for a slice of cheese pizza and a belly buster Stromboli for my husband and son at home. My brother in law enjoyed his steak and cheese. My mom really enjoyed her strawberry salad and loved the raspberry vinaigrette it came with but did mention that the chicken was a little spicy. I thought the lobster ravioli was okay, definitely not the best I’ve had but they were large and filling. The pink sauce it’s served with does taste a little like campbells tomato soup though. My grandma used to make a poor man’s pink sauce (her words, not mine) that included campbells tomato soup and heavy cream. It tasted identical to that. Now the spaghetti… I should have pre warned my sister because the marinara that served with the mozzarella sticks had no flavor and was the consistency of water, so naturally I expected it to be along the same lines as that. And it was. There was no flavor! She ended up just eating one of my lobster raviolis and boxing the rest. We had to take the spaghetti home and add our own Italian seasoning and garlic to elevate it to something you would want to eat. My husband did however enjoy his belly buster Stromboli. Moving forward I will just stick to ordering pizza if we do go back.

I do want to comment that our table was right next to the pick up window. I watched food sit there way too long and feel bad for whoever ordered spinach and artichoke dip that sat in that window for about 20 minutes. I witnessed so many servers, the floor manager, and the hostess just walk past it so many times. I used to work in the restaurant industry. Regardless of it’s your table or not… your priority is to deliver...

The restaurant was so loud we had to shout at our tablemates to be heard. One appetizer was ordered and came out fairly quickly; however, the two pizzas we ordered took over an hour to arrive. The server stopped by three times to say our order would be out in "ten minutes". It did not arrive in ten minutes any of those times.

After an hour had passed, my husband asked to speak with the manager. When my husband informed her that we had been waiting an hour already, the first thing she did was make an excuse that the party outside ordered 20 pizzas and that the owner was even in the kitchen cooking.Then she said, "Sorry, guys." (in a VERY insincere manner) AS SHE WAS WALKING AWAY, while my husband was still talking. Our drinks were empty; of course you can guess by now she neither noticed nor offered to refill them or do anything else for that matter.

Management 101, apologize first! If you offer an explanation, take responsibility for the slow down. For example, "I'm so sorry! We got slammed with a huge order and we were not prepared, but that's certainly not your fault; that's on us. Is there anything I can get you while you are waiting? Drink refills, an appetizer, or something? I will definitely make a 10% adjustment to your bill." Between the four of us, our bill was around $50. $5 dollars, a sincere apology, and some water and we would have been happy.

People just want to be heard, to have their concerns acknowledged and validated. But instead, our feelings were minimized and the only thing this so-called manager managed to do was make everyone angry and run from the table as fast as she could. AND we will tell EVERYONE we no about it too.

Unfortunately, there is more. Our Meat Lovers Pizza barely had any meat on it at all and my daughter's Taco Pizza had what tasted like Thousand Island Dressing poured over the top. The whole thing was managed poorly. If orders were backed up out of sight, don't keep seating people. People will wait far more patiently for a table than for food at that table. Alternatively, instead of cooking 20+ pizzas before everyone else's, cook 5 and slip in a few in-between. People who order 20 pizzas when they sit down expect to wait. In fact, the server should tell them it is going to take a while since they only have a few ovens available. I'm not even in the restaurant business but these things are simple logic.

Needless to say, we won't be going there any more and we don't recommend you do either. It...