Pacino's Ristorante — Restaurant in Garden City

We tried to eat at Pacino’s last night, our party consisted of me, my wife, our teenage daughter, and our six year old. We walked in, stood in the hallway for quiet some time while no one checked in with us, finally someone came by and asked if we had a reservation. The website nor anything on the door says anything about reservations should be made. We were told since we didn’t have a reservation that it would be an hour wait, by what seemed to be a manager, we responded with “that’s fine we will wait”. The manager just stood and stared us down as if we had answered incorrectly then just turned and walked away from us. We then decided we would put in a reservation and wait in the car, after asking about putting in a reservation, we were seated within 10 minutes, crazy how that happened. After being seated, we looked over the menu and waited on someone to come take our drink orders. Multiple waitresses, same manager, and what looked to be an owner or possibly another manager made multiple laps around the restaurant refilling drinks for all the other tables, almost intentionally skipping/not paying attention to us. And when I say restaurant, I mean it’s one room with 10-20 tables at most. We waited for quiet some time, I think I read the menu three or four times during our wait. I told my wife we will give them a few more minutes to come take our drink order then we were leaving because the staff had hit literally both tables on either side of us while continuing to walk by us. So we waited, nobody came to take a simple drink order, we stood up and proceeded to leave, my wife was stopped by the manager that gave us an hour wait time then stared us down after it seemed we did not give the correct answer to her telling us we needed a reservation. Anywho, she was stopped and asked was something wrong, my wife responded that we had not received service and that it was a terrible experience from the moment we walked in the door. So now we are here, writing a review which I never do but this was terrible from the moment we walked in.

So a few take aways:

1. Make a reservation or the staff/manager/whomever will ignore you or give you an outrageously long possible wait time hoping you will just leave.
2. Don’t bring children, both of ours had some form of electronics to keep them quiet, but still it seemed to be obvious that we should not have brought our kids.
3. Just my personal opinion for this one because of how I felt, I would wear a little...

What a horrible evening. My Sister and I searched for a nice fine dining local Italian place for our vacation dinner. This place had 4.7 stars and the menu although pricey looked amazing. We don't mind paying for great Italian food! We were so disappointed from the get go. We were seated quickly ao we thought we were on our way to a great night. Time passed and finally we were given some water. We took our time reviewing the menu. We both decided on Veal Piccata. We ordered. We received bread. It was tasty but very petite. No larger than a half a dollar in size around. We received our salads. On a 6 inch plate with maybe 1/4cup of salad on it. We asked for ranch and some blue cheese on the side. (We were charged for the ranch... there may have been a tbs of it, if that, on the salad. It was tasty and quite fresh. We waited and waited and waited and finally. The moment we had been waiting on! Our Picatta! It looked amazing. I took pictures! The moment of truth. There was absolutely no flavor. I asked for butter and lemon. The part owner asked "for what? Your water, I said no ma'am, for my Picatta. My sister said, it has no flavor. We were trying to make it edible. She came with the butter and 2 small lemon slices and slammed it on the table without looking at me. She was evidently upset that I felt the need to flavor there 5 generations back recipe. I am a chef and I was not being rude. I asked politely and wasn't going to say a word. She asked, so I was honest. I got mine flavored up and it was edible. The Veal was tough but sliced thin in my plate and manageable. My sisters was the thickness of a chicken fried steak. It was tough as nails and hard to handle. She ate a small piece that was also tough. It chewed like leather. She stopped. We let the part owner know of her issues. I cleaned my place she barley ate 1/3 of hers. At 38 a plate she should have either offered something else or taken 1/2 the cost off. She did. Nether. She argued that we should have said something sooner. We did. When I asked for the butter and 🍋 lemon. So sadly we left and my sister was still hungry and both of us were totally disappointed. We will never return and we are warning. If you choose to dine here,...

I remember eating here a couple years back and the food and service was great. Last Thursday we went for an early dinner and it was very disappointing. There was only two other tables with people when we arrived and we stood for 10 mins in the hobby/hall waiting to be acknowledged and to be seated. Our waitress was not that attentive but that could have been overlooked if the food had been at least half way decent. We had orders the stuff mushrooms as a starter. When it finally arrived it was room temp at best. Not very pleasing. The salad that came had a couple nats in it. I finally got the waitress to come over. The load of bugs/nats crawling around in the salad. Her comment to me was that they buy their produce from a local farmers market and the veggies are fresh. OK that’s wonderful, but not an excuse to serve living bugs to a customer. Perhaps they should have washed and prepped the salad to kill them and make sure there was nothing left on the leaves. I know I do this at home. The spaghetti and meatball and let me stress. It is meatball, singular, and not really a jumbo size meatball. Was like any meatball and spaghetti that you can fine and any diner restaurant. Nothing remotely saying this is authentic Italian cuisine. It was bland and lacking! My spouse had chicken Parmesan, which wasn’t that bad other than it was the same sauce that was used in the spaghetti and meatballs which was bland. That being said the coding on the chicken Parmesan was decent. Dessert was a mini cannoli and it is a mini cannoli. Again nothing that would say you are dinning at a nice Italian restaurant. It was like food you find at a common roadside diner. Big Boy or a Shoney’s. Would not recommend this place now. A couple years go yes but now it is just...