Pastorante — Restaurant in Harrisburg

TL;DR - Food is great but service was slooooooooooooooooow

I wanted to like this place--my wife and I had walked by several times this weekend and wanted to check it out. But when we finally got a chance to stop in on a Sunday night, it left a lot to be desired. It started out well when I checked out the cool chairs they had that hook onto the table for easy storage, but everything just took too long. Our waitress delivered us a bowl of salad and then didn't return for almost ten minutes to bring us the dressing and the necessary cutlery. Another ten minutes went by before we got our soup and the garlic bread we had ordered (not a good value, in my view--$2.50 for exactly two slices of baguette with garlic butter). And we had been seated in the restaurant ONE WHOLE HOUR before our entree arrived. It is hard to fathom how a restaurant that serves NOTHING BUT PASTA allowed the Earth to make 1/24 of a rotation before presenting us with a simple, but tasty, pasta dish. Yet that was our experience! Perhaps this was largely a kitchen issue but when our waitress engaged diners at a neighboring table in 5 minutes of chit-chat while holding our just-placed order hostage (rather than passing it on to the kitchen), it didn't speed along our dining experience.

I think we'll give them the benefit of the doubt this first time (maybe they were just short staffed, or something) but it's a good thing we weren't in a...

We came from out of town, about 6-hours away, and came here for dinner, and sadly we weren't impressed. While far from the absolute worst Italian food the wife and I have ever had, it really wasn't great. She had chicken alfredo, and I had the spaghetti and meatballs. The noodles in her dish were much, much larger than a standard noodle used for alfredo, seemed undercooked (yes, we're both well aware of what al dente means, but this still needed a little more time in the water to even get to al dente), and the tiny pieces of chicken involved looked similar to what I'd give my cats from a can and seemed to be tiny fragments of seasoned dark meat. The sauce was claggy and stiff, however, they were kind enough to make the sauce very garlicy as my wife prefers it. My spaghetti noodles were cooked OK, but the sauce... I swear it's just a can of crushed tomatoes and lots of water. I even asked for extra, extra sauce, and the amount of water in my bowl either means the pasta wasn't drained at all or the sauce is heavily watered-down. That's all I could taste at least. And as far as the meatballs go, I don't know that I could do the mental gymnastics needed to convince myself that they're anything but frozen. I think I even saw cooked pasta being fridged overnight to be served to paying customers the following day, but I absolutely cannot 100% confirm that. All-in-all, I really don't want to go back there a...

I visited today with my friend and we both wanted to order the chicken bulgogi. Our waitress was nice to start, and she recommended we order the lunch special which included a side salad. The lunch special was $11 with the salad included where as the dinner portion was $13, so my friend and I both agreed on the lunch special. The food was very good and we enjoyed our meal, but when the waitress brought the checks by, we were both charged the dinner portion ($13) and an extra $3.75 for the side salad. I told the waitress it was a mistake since she had specifically recommended the lunch special which included the salad. She apologized and admitted it was her mistake for not letting us know that we would be charged extra but insisted the manager said there’s nothing they could do. The manager came over and was incredibly rude. There was a bit back and forth between us with me trying to explain the issue. She finally stopped pushing it and grabbed the checks, discounted them, and then brought them back and cleared our table in a forceful way without saying a word. Her demeanor was very unprofessional and caused us to feel awkward and unwelcome. A good business would accommodate for their customers, especially when a mistake was done on their part. I’m glad they discounted the check, and the food was great, but the service needs a...