Milano Trattoria — Restaurant in Georgetown

I had a very negative and unexpected experience. I ordered my food online and it said it'd be ready in 30 minutes. I got there a 10 minutes late and they said itd be just a short wait. Well.... much to my surprise I would be waiting quite a while so I waited in the car but they said theyd being it out. I knew they were busy so I tried to be a good sport. However, after another 20 min I came back in and they said they were boxing it now. Flash forward another 20 min and it wasnt done so I went to explain to my wife they were just really busy. When I came back in the restaurant the food was waiting. About 75 minutes after I ordered it and 45 minutes after the time they said itd be ready. Knowing my wife would kill me for waiting so long and not checking to be sure everything was there I began to make sure all our items were in the bags. That was when a grumpy lqdy started to yell at me. She said it was unacceptable to check my food here at the counter and if I didnt trust them I should have been here while they bagged it. She followed with " youre just a driver after all!" Which I found extremely disrespectful to any worker of the service industries, as if it was okay or acceptable to treat a driver like that. I asked her where I could check my food and she said go to the bar. This was puzzling because thay was only 5 ft from where I was checking my food but I went to the bar. By this point many people turned to see what all the yelling was about. My initial inclination was to yell back at her but I didnt want to cause a scene and I tried so hard to give her and this restaurant the benefit of the doubt - maybe just a busy stressful night, maybe just caught them at a bad time.... maybe just accidentally set her off with the wrong thing at the wrong time. After I checked my food and saw it was all there i quietly asked the person who yelled at me if they were the manager or hostess and she replied thay she was Rose, the owner. I told her I thought she was strangely and unacceptably rude towards a customer and it didnt make sense. I always check my food since Ive been disappointed missing an item or two all too often. She replied, angrily and loud as before, that if I didnt like it I could feel free not to return. Then she tried to say she was liable for the food burning me if I checked it too soon. Again, somewhat puzzling. I waited 2 weeks before posting this because I didnt want to write it in anger, but it was almost surreal at how angry and unexpected this was. As far as the food: my pasta trio was very so-so, and my wife had the baked ziti which she described as "just ok". My son had buttered noodles which felt more like drowned butter noodles - extremely greasy though acceptable. My other son had fettucini Alfredo which was also just ok. I didnt try the pizza though I can honestly say it did look delicious. However, the typical pasta dishes that we ordered were far too low end of average to get again, even if it were cheap food and it was somewhat pricey on top of all that. With respect to the owners attitude, I hope she can turn that around because the other workers seemed to be hard working and genuine and aside from the owner's disrespectful attitude, the place seemed to have a decent ambience. Overall 2/5 stars for the food but 0/5 for the disrespectful interaction...

Marginal flavor, pricey menu, courteous chef, and service that shocks.

My how we have fallen from grace. We revisited Milano's after not having taken seat since 2016 and the disaster that followed was crowd-worthy.

To start us off, the arancini appetizer was well made and had decent flavor but was followed by a caprese salad that had tomato slices thicker than a phone book and basil leaves that were chopped with a hammer. The carbonara main had a nice creamy texture; but its neighbor across the table was gnocchi with a confusion of the tomato type needed to use for its sauce, dough with an overcooked or stale taste (couldn't distinguish) and misshapen condition... And then there was the bread, one of the quintessential accompaniments of Italian cuisine. We were presented with an over-salted pair of rolls that were 'grocery store identical' in shape which begged the question of their exact origin.

The comment about the lack of rustic appeal in the bread seemed to have given the staff permission to become irate with its customers. Our waitress, who I am guessing has a vested interest in the restaurant, became instantly argumentative about the feedback despite the discretion exercised to keep the tempers cool. The staff member used the threat to bring the chef out as a ruse to disregard 'notes of improvement' that we only requested to be passed on. We payed in full, stuck around after the outburst, and never returned any dishes as a gesture to prevent stress on the kitchen. An over-stressed kitchen only makes more mistakes.

The ironic part is that we want this place to survive past the new Olive Garden erecting on the other side of the highway which will have a commanding influence of Italian cuisine in Georgetown with its marketing reach. And there is nothing I despise more than the small, honest kitchen being pushed out by a giant corporation. Yet, if the standards continue to miss the fundamentals, then I'll take my chances with Olive Garden coupons in the near future.

Room for Improvement: On an even more comical note, the changes needed are simpler than you think, and doesn't warrant getting bent out of shape over.

Ensure your herb/vegetable cuts correspond with the dish properly, ensure the dough of the bread has the rustic presentation as well as balanced flavor (the same goes for your pasta doughs), and feedback for the chef doesn't require outbursts for your customers, ever. Chefs are humans that make plenty of mistakes (just like everybody else) and need issues brought up to their attention for FUTURE reference and perspective.

Correct your course and the potential of solidifying Milano's as 'the locals’ favorite Italian', is within your reach. See...

I had to do a double take and make sure this was indeed the same restaurant the other reviews were referring to, and indeed it is. My family was visiting from Houston and we were looking for a nice local place to eat, and figured the 4+ stars sounded like a great choice.

Unfortunately our evening here ended up being the worst dining experience we’ve had in recent memory. Perhaps they were having a VERY OFF day, but there was only one other family in the restaurant on the Saturday evening we visited, which was our first red flag.

After we sat down, the waitress came over to take our drink orders and a BABY ROACH ran out of the menu she handed us and skittered across the table. We were all mortified, waitress included, and she cleared our table and disinfected it. That should have been our sign to leave, but we figured, hey, stuff happens, and decided to stick around.

The food was beyond subpar. House salad was plain iceberg bag salad with a couple pieces of cucumber and tomato. My spaghetti and meatballs was served over cooked and lukewarm and the meatballs were clearly frozen, not made in house. I’m sorry, but when I pay $13 for spaghetti and meatballs, I want something a little fresher than I can get from a can of Chef Boyardee. :( All of the food was served on dingy plastic plates which only added to the low effort appearance of the meal.

We really wanted to like this place. The staff was very nice, and the owner came over and apologized for the roach and waived the price of the meal, which we were extremely grateful for, as we honestly did not feel anything we ordered was deserving of the high prices. On our way out we saw another dead bug along the wall, which eliminated what little remained of our appetites.

Again, maybe they were having an off day, but there is never an excuse to serve frozen food to customers expecting a somewhat authentic Italian-American...