Cotto A Legna — Restaurant in Geneva Township

Service more distasteful than the food!

If you are reading this, please save yourself time and just go to a different Italian restaurant downtown Geneva (GIA MIA, Villa Verone, Osteria Bigolaro, Livia, etc) or Old World Riganato further out. My husband and I had been to all other restaurants downtown Geneva, and wanted to venture out and try a new one. I'll tell l you this, there is a reason we have never been to Cotto A Legna before.

My husband and I waited a half hour for our appetizer, however, the manager who stayed in the kitchen the whole night wrongly ignored our order of crab cakes. Our dinner was brought out to us before our appetizer, we clearly told the waitress that we no longer wanted the crab cakes because we wanted to eat our main dinner instead of our meals sitting under a heat lamp. About 5 mins into eating our meal, the waitress stopped by with our crab cakes and said the manager was going to give us the appetizer 50% off. Are you kidding me!? 1) We clearly said we didn't want the appetizer, the manager messed up ignoring our initial appetizer order, 2) Dumping off the appetizer and telling us we have to pay 50% of something we no longer wanted. My husband and I have both worked at restaurants, if you are going to dump food off at our table that we made clear we no longer wanted (KITCHEN ERROR) COMP 100%, NOT 50% of it. Such distastefulness for a restaurant downtown Geneva!!! Business must be bad to be such penny pinchers!!

What further made our experience worse, was the general slowness of service. Waiting 10 mins to place our order, waiting 30 mins for our food, waiting another 30 mins to pay our bill (15 mins for the bill to be dropped off and another 15 mins for our credit card to be ran). It was a Monday night, pretty slow, two experienced waiters should have been able to handle it. My husband and I couldn't wait to run away from that place and never return, stuck waiting and struggling to make eye contact with the waitstaff for 30 mins to pay our bill was...

Tonight was my second time here and I most likely will not be back. We had chosen this restaurant instead of the others surrounding the area based on the menu. The food is delicious, That's why I give this place two stars. The customer service is a whole other story that I would like to mention. We walked in and sat at a table for two. The restaurant was dead, only our table and one other were occupied. The waiters and waitresses stood around the bar just waiting for people to walk into the doors. Once we sat down, we were not offered to order any drinks we were just given water. We look over the menu and decide that we wanted to spilt a pasta dish due to the portion size and us just wanting a small bite. After placing our order with our waiter, James. James walks over to the circle of waitresses standing near the bar area and complained to his co-workers that we only ordered one dish to spilt. As James was complaining I looked right at the situation and over heard the woman tell him that it was okay and to just put the order in. SO AWKWARD. I never felt so uncomfortable for ordering a dish to spilt with someone. After placing our order, the restaurant started to fill with people. We observed that all the tables near us had gotten bread soon after being seated. We tried to order bread but every time James would come to our table he would ask us a question or make a comment while walking right past our table without stopping for a brief moment. We asked a women who was available for some bread and again, I observed a whole conversation about it at the bar. James comes to our table says "Oh, you guys would like some bread" while walking away. A couple minutes later, we get bread. Right after finishing our meal, literally our last bite James handed us our check. I guess dessert just wasn't an option at that point.

Overall, if you want good food and poor service then this is the...

Myself and the wife loved the food here and have spread the word before my visit on Sat 5/8. Actually made a reservation days prior for 6:30pm. Let's just say we arrived and met another couple for the scheduled time. We were told to wait outside until the table was ready. OK, we do! 20 plus minutes pass and we see people with parties of 4 walk in and suddenly get seated. Walk back in and look around, no tables open. That's weird, we were told we were next. I ask and the employees says you will get the next table. We decide to sit at the bar and wait to make sure they remember we were waiting. Some insight, when we arrived they said they didn't have a reservation, but my wife pulled the email up to show them??

Sitting at the bar another 20 minutes and not a single person even comes to offer to serve us a drink??? As we are sitting watching we witness the hostess walk another party that just walked in the door to our supposed table. I actually walked up to the hostess and asked her in so many words, what is going on. She tells me to speak to the manager. She points him out and am told he is the owner. I engage him in a conversation of the experience and not even an apology. Never even came over to smooth things over. I understand the current service industry struggles. But when your business is lucky enough to have the business, I'm confused how you own restaurant with zero customer service and expect a long prosperous business plan. It takes a lot for me to waste my time to write a review like this. To be honest,, the food was descent, but not good enough for me to come back after this.. Myself and my family will never return after our...