Mama Leone's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Gaylord

There is a lot of potential in this place. But until the owners invest back into their restaurant, it will only be one of those "it could have been" places. I am a food and restaurant consultant and the things they can do to make this place hopping like the rest of Gaylord, is not far fetched. They have an outdoor area that is not functional as no money seems to be put back into the business. Oh the things they can do if the invest in the outdoor area.

Let's start of with ambiance: building is old, and needs some updates. You can keep the Italian theme for sure but can still update. From exterior to interiors. Bathrooms need updating, carpet, brighten up the place. Old air vents in the ceiling look like their about to fall on you. Remove the tacky Christmas decorations, it's February!

Service is great but because of slow business, it seems like they can't afford to hire more help.

Now the food. They start you off with a bread basket. Only 1/4 of that basket is edible. The rest of the bread is old bread that they bake to avoid waste and is HARD AS A ROCK. You will literally break your teeth trying to eat the breadsticks and garlic bread. Here alone you have so much waste. Serve soft bread. Put in a focaccia bread in there! You're also an Italian restaurant, don't just put butter. Serve it with olive oil,balsamic and some Parmesan cheese. Add to the service and have your servers mix up the dipping plate for the guests. House salad is just sad. It's a plate full of mixed greens basically. You'll get maybe two cherry tomatoes and cucumbers, and more of the hard bread cut up to make croutons. A little touches of a few toppings to make an actually Italian house salad is not hard.

Their portions became much smaller to cut costs. You order an $18 manicotti and lasagna plate you get two small manicottis and probably a 4"x2" lasagna slice that has only two layers, hardly any meat and swimming in their marinara sauce that is EXTREMELY SALTY. So anything with marinara sauce will be super salty.

Flavors of food you will only taste is salty. Their missing out of fresh herbs and the savory Italian cuisine.

Other dishes you find very little of the seafood, I think I got 5 pieces of shrimp, and more noodles. Chicken piccata is nothing like the real deal. Again a plate full of noodles and probably 5 capers and Heavily breaded chicken.

Their pizza, we'll it's pizza, pretty hard to mess it up. Not authentic Italian but oh well.

Their desserts are pretty good. No complains there.

Again every place in Gaylord is always full. For obvious reasons this place isn't. It doesn't have to be a place...

Ditto on the BAD BAD food. Currently in the process of writing them a letter. We noticed they opened back up this spring after being closed for "RENOVATIONS" ahhh yeahh...(not sure that was the case) so with that said we decided to stop in for lunch around 1 ish (June of 2013) NOT A SINGLE PERSON THERE FOR LUNCH. Should have been a sign. We had ate there previously and it was ok.... Thought we'd give it a try again ! OM MY MY MY !! The lasagna is almost impossible to describe (I'm not kidding at all) It was merely these little 1" or 2" pasta squares piled together with ummmm sauce not sure what else & cheese. I went to cut into it thinking it was a piece of lasagna when I noticed it was just pieces. So I proceed to eat and it tasted different and as I scrapped the sauce off the piece of pasta I noticed the pasta was like mush. mushy and "BURNT" oh yes every piece on the bottom was literally burnt mush. I was so appalled that a restaurant would even consider setting that plate in front of anyone. It was absolutely unbelievable. The waiter (who I know has been there - probably a family member) really didn't seem surprised or much like it really even mattered to him. Which only made us more irritated. Can you tell I'm slightly irritated !! We only paid for my husbands lunch - of which we should have refused to pay b/c his ravioli was basically out of a can !! Both salads had OLD brown pieces of lettuce and I think Cabbage in it. Oh and before I forget the garlic toast was so burnt (YES BLACK EDGES) and hard we hit it on the table and it was like a rock. WHY WOULD YOU EVEN WALK THAT ITEM TO CUSTOMER IS BEYOUND ME!) It was so obvious. It's a .50cent or less item your cost why wouldn't you MAKE A NEW PIECE !!!! NEVER NEVER AGAIN and we tell everyone STAY AWAY go someplace else in Gaylord. WE NEED THE BUSINESS in town !! I'm betting money this place close's down for good real soon. ...

We tried this restaurant for the first time on Friday. Something important to know is, be sure to ask if they have gnocchi before ordering something that includes it. I wanted to try a variety plate and picked the one that had gnocchi. We literally came here so I could get it. We received our orders timely and after digging around my meal, I found no gnocchi. My waiter disappeared for about 10 minutes (we were the only people there around 4:00) and I finally seen him in the distance and had to call him back over. I told him they forgot it. He says "Oh, we must be out.". ??? I told him I would have never gotten this meal if I would have known this. That was that. No offer to make it right. No discount. Nothing. He didn't even check if they may have just forgotten it. They also must have been out of spaghetti noodles, because I got linguine. But, that was no big deal. The pasta was average. The sauce was tasty and the ravioli was very good and also al dente. We also got a pizza which was very good!! The server was pleasant and likely this situation was not his fault. I believe he just started his shift, but whom I believe was the owner was also there. Unfortunately, we likely will not return. We really wanted to love this restaurant, but we walked out feeling annoyed. Especially when I was so excited to try their gnocchi. Serving a dish that doesn't include what is described and saying nothing about it just seems off to me. Then doing nothing to make up for it only made it worse. But, we really did enjoy the pizza, so maybe that will...