Famiglia — Restaurant in Greenville

Famiglia is a place I used to love. The lasagna was better than my dearly departed Italian uncle used to make, and that's saying something. I am not rich, so I don't go out often. That being said, when I do go out, I expect good service and food for my hard earned money. I will not return to a place that doesn't provide the services they're supposed to. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case with Famiglia.

I had two bad experiences before I decided to write about it.

The first time, I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. I thought perhaps they were just having a bad day. I think it was in the afternoon at the end of last week that I went in. I sat at the bar, waiting to order my drink. The bartender sat behind the bar with her face focused on her laptop. She had it on top of the bar. After about five minutes, I spoke up and asked the woman if I could order a drink and look at the menu. (I always look at it even though I always end up ordering the lasagna.) She gave me a fake smile, said she was sorry, and turned her face back to her laptop! I was shocked at the levels of unprofessionalism, contempt, and classlessness I was witnessing. I politely excused myself and left.

Yesterday, I went in again. It was a little later in the afternoon, maybe early evening. The same young lady was at the bar. This time, staring at her phone while sitting on a beer cooler. There were a couple other servers also at the bar and on their phones. I gave them as much respectful distance as I could. (It's a small bar.) Again, I sat waiting for someone to do their job. I focused on the wrench shaped sign that states, "You Can't Fix Stupid". Again, I asked the young lady behind the bar nicely if I might please have a menu and order my drink (I think her name was Brittany). While she meandered around collecting what I can only assume was what she felt she needed to take my order, she carried on joking and laughing with the other derelict staff.

I ordered my favorite meal, the lasagna. Let me just say that I'm used to their lasagna being full, flavorful, and standing on the plate proudly with thick layers. You could slice through it like a thick hunk of meat. THIS was not that lasagna.

My meal came out with the top half of the lasagna sliding off the top. The layers just appeared thinner overall. When I cut into it and took my first bite, it was hotter than ten hells. The second bite from the other side was ice cold. It was very clearly microwaved incorrectly.

The marinara tasted very different as well. It was extra peppery and almost tasted as if someone had strained Spaghetti-O's, watered it down, and added it to the original sauce. Overall it was very thin, peppery, and unsatisfying. I couldn't even finish it.

I decided to try and speak to the manager. Again, I fought for the bartender's attention. When she decided to finally come up to me, I asked her if I could please speak to the manager. At this point, she coldly looked at me and told me she IS the manager. This troubled me because I knew nothing would be done when at least part of my issues were with her. So, I asked her if there was anyone above her. At this point, she wasn't even bothering to hide her contempt when she told me the only one above her was the owner. When I asked if I could speak to him, she quickly told me in a (clearly) well rehearsed way that he wasn't there. I could see the lie.

This restaurant seems to have begun its downward spiral. This is sad to me because it once had the potential to be the best Italian restaurant in Greenville. The only thing I keep thinking about now, is what kind of owner puts that kind of unprofessional raff in charge of the entire front of the house??

There are many places to spend your money in Greenville, my suggestion is you don't spend it here. Unless you have saintly patience and no taste buds. Two...

We've ordered ahead at Famiglia twice now, and both times the service was terrible. The first time I went to pick up the food - ordered well in advance and set to be ready at 5pm - the staff had no idea where the order was. They eventually found it, but the food had obviously been made well ahead of the 5pm pickup time selected and was already frigid. There was no apology, no acknowledgement of an issue - just poorly plated cold food handed over at 5:15 rather than 5:00. The second time was on Valentine's Day, which is obviously an incredibly busy time; however, again the order was placed online several hours in advance for a 5pm pickup. The hostess brought the bill to the window - which I thought was odd given that it was paid for online (including a 20% tip) - and then walked away to get the food. When I opened it, it was the wrong bill (for someone whose first name sounds kind of like my last name), so when another girl brought the food to the window I told her that I wasn't sure it was the right order since the ticket I was given was incorrect (This happened to be the same girl from the first experience, so perhaps the crux of the issue lies in staffing...). She gave me an extremely rude look and told me that it was my order and listed off a few things. She then told me that she was going to go get our salads and asked about dressings. While she was gone the second time, I checked the bag and none of the sides were included with one order and an entire entree was missing. The first girl returned and brought me the correct receipt, and I told her that several items were missing along with the salads. Second girl returns as I'm talking to the first one and says "I TOLD YOU that I was going to get the rest of your order." I responded that actually, she'd said she was going to get salads and had not mentioned that half of the entire order was still missing. She then rolled her eyes and stuck the bags out of the window at me. The first girl asked if there was anything else they could do, and while girl #2 was still staring me down with what can only be described as stankface, I stated that an apology for the service was in order. Girl #2 just laughed and stared at me a bit more. I understand that Valentine's is a busy day for restaurants, so I can understand mix-ups. Treating your customers as if they are a burden or somehow bothering you, however, is entirely unacceptable. The food itself is fairly middle of the road - not terrible, not great - but poor customer service will tank a restaurant every time. The server with long blonde hair who wore braids on Valentine's Day needs a lesson in actual hospitality management, or she needs to no longer work there because she's a liability to the...

We went to this restaurant Saturday night early, around 6:30 PM. We had a young male server who was pleasant enough but not knowledgeable about the menu. We ordered the Seafood fra dievlo and a linguini white clam sauce. We asked the server if one of us could substitute soup for salad, the server had to go ask, he did not know if this would be allowed. He came back a couple minutes later and informed us it would be a $2.00 up charge for the soup. We declined. When we received our salads, we could see why. The 2 house salads were tiny and looked to be yesterday's unused salads. We both ordered blue cheese dressing which was creamy Italian dressing with blue cheese chunks in it being passed off. The bread was hard and was most likely yesterday' s unused bread. While waiting on our meals, I noticed other house salads being brought out that were much larger and fresher looking than ours. I also noticed 2 large plump Cesar salads brought to the table next to us, I asked The server about these salads and he informed me it was $1.00 up charge. Had I known this, I would have gladly spent the $1.00 to get a better salad. The entrees came out and were "okay". Not a whole lot of food, you would think pasta is inexpensive enough that they would not be shy with portion size- this was not the case. We were shown a dessert tray at the end of our meal and asked the server if it was real ricotta cheese in the cannoli and he had no idea. At that point, I was not impressed with the place so I passed on the dessert. I can't say the food was bad but it was $16.00 for the linguini and $19.00 for the Seafood entree which had the salad and bread been better and the portion size of the entrees been better would be ok. The place lacks atmosphere, presence and knowledge. We are from NY so we've been to a lot of Italian pizzerias and spaghetti houses, we were hoping for better. In addition, we were not seated far from the kitchen and heard a lot of joking, laughing and horse play. My advice would be to get some seasoned wait staff who are there to actually make a living, increase portion size, NEVER serve YESTERDAY'S old...