I have gone every year to Provino’s for at least one family member’s birthday since before 2006. Yesterday was the third or fourth time at this location.

I always get the same thing, but this year the quality and amount was notably diminished. The garlic on the rolls was a green color (and different from previous occasions), which was openly discussed by several in our party in the immediate presence of the waitstaff (as well as our being apprehensive about eating it).

The portions of our meals were smaller than on previous occasions. I got the chicken and broccoli fettuccine and multiple people commented that it looked smaller than usual. For over $18, I got 4 pieces of broccoli, 5 bite-sized pieces of chicken, and a reduced portion of pasta. That’s not including ~$4 for a soft drink I never got a refill on.

Normally, I take half my meal home to have as another meal later and am still stuffed. This time, I followed my normal routine and asked for a to-go box before eating because I portion my meal out ahead of time (which ended up arriving after everyone else was halfway through their meal). By the time I finished eating what I hadn’t boxed up, I was still hungry and ended up eating the rest as soon as I got home, with room to spare.

The only other nuisance was a fly that wouldn’t leave the table alone.

The waitstaff were generally friendly, which was a positive.

All in all, it’s not worth it even when a person in the party is getting their meal at a reduced price. If a place has to skimp on veg and pasta, to say nothing of the chicken or green garlic, even with such drastic profit margins on these pasta dishes… I don’t know what to say.

Maybe it’s a one off thing. Maybe it’s this location. It’s too expensive for what you get to test it out.

If it wouldn’t have disrupted the evening and celebration further, more explicit attempts at redress would have occurred beyond openly discussing it with waitstaff at the table. That is to say, in fairness, that a formal complaint was not filed with the manager because we weren’t taking any more time out of our night to focus on it beyond the explicit remarks made in the presence of waitstaff. As such, the manager was not given the opportunity to make attempts to rectify such, even if the staff were and such items passed the standards of multiple staff.

We’ve decided that we will be discontinuing our tradition as, in our opinion, it is no longer a good quality/value option.