Bottagra Restaurant — Restaurant in Hawthorne

PLEASE READ. FYI - We dined in late October 2021. I reserved a night with Bottagra weeks in advance on Open Table for our first time dining at this restaurant. We were looking forward to enjoying a nice meal in celebration of our anniversary. The restaurant is an hour away, but I do not mind the drive as long as the restaurant lives up to its reviews and expectations.

We arrived on time for our 6:30PM reservation and were immediately sat in the outdoor tent that still had Halloween decorations from the event held the previous night. I did not drive an hour to be sat in these conditions for an anniversary. I explained to the server I booked a reservation through Open Table and the server stated I was to specify whether we were to sit indoor or outdoor because the option was available. Strike #1 - Open Table did not give the option to specify during the reservation process for this particular restaurant, so the server had lied. I requested if we could move our table indoors, as I did not drive the hour to sit outdoors. We were notified there was a table available and moved indoors to be informed it was a tall bar table which was uncomfortable and didn't mesh with our occasion. Please do not misunderstand my decision for ungratefulness. We are celebrating an anniversary, not a catch-up drink with a buddy. Also, the floor manager explained those who call in their reservations get first choice on whether the party wants to sit indoors/outdoors and confirmed there is no option on Open Table to specify seating, but the tone of the voice indicated I was the one at fault despite all of that. Strike #2 - My advice to those looking to dine is to call the establishment directly for reservations and do not forget to specify your seating. I do not wish this upon anyone else looking to enjoy a special night.

This immediate obstacle definitely provided a bitter taste after trying to make the night special for the one I love. We are occasional drinkers and decided to share a drink for our special night. I'm simple and ordered a beer, but my date's drink was not crafted well and wasn't enjoyable. For appetizers, we shared the fried calamari and the spinach malfatti, two Italian staples. The fried calamari was rather flavorless and was jumping off the plate when trying to eat because they were overcooked and had an extremely hard exterior. The spinach malfatti was decent at best, but overcooked and had an unsettling, gluey texture. Our entrees included the chicken saltimbocca, which was bland and included an overwhelming heaping amount of brown gravy, and one of the fish specials that I shared with my date because her entree was unappealing and flavorless. The only reason why the establishment is receiving a one star rating is because we thoroughly enjoyed the fish special. Lastly, we never order dessert, but decided to share a celebratory sweet treat. I do not remember the name, but I believe it was some sort of lemon cake. It did not taste fresh, the cake part was slightly dry/stale.

From a serving perspective, the server did a very poor job that evening, even if he was aware of my frustrations with how things were mishandled. Again, please do not misunderstand my frustration with respectfulness. I did not take my frustrations out on anyone and treated the server with respect. The server made inappropriate attempts to make light of the situation, but I certainly wasn't fond of him consistently reminding me of this poor night. Strike #3 - He made an attempt to tell us that the tent was only put up for the outdoor event, yet there are numerous pictures displayed on Google telling otherwise. Again, this server continues to lie to new customers and knows nothing about us to make light of a situation.

To put this in perspective, no matter how disappointing or unsatisfying a meal may be I always try to find the positives because I am sharing it with the one I love. My objective in life is to make the woman I love and the people in my life happy. Unfortunately, this establishment was far from that with the reasons...

So this is more of a review for their nightlife/Thursday night dinner parties. Somehow I had the luck of being invited to birthday dinner/banquet parties at Bottagra two (2) times in as many months. Not only did I get invited to the party, but on each occasion we were seated right smack in the middle of the tented party area. First, let me tell you, the theatrics would rival some NYC shows (that's a good thing). There were drummers, fire and sword manipulating belly dancers, as well as a live DJ. There was also a host bartender mixing shots, on-the-fly, as he passed through each party. They even had a mascot running about.

Meanwhile, if you weren't in the party mood, but you wanted to have a nice date night, their interior restaurant was fantastically and intricately decorated for the holidays. The interior was warm and inviting. The sound from the tented/party area actually didn't permeate into the indoor section of the restaurant.

Each of my party squads were like ~twenty (20) people deep, so items were pre-ordered from the Sit Down Banquet menu. So I got to sample the calamari, tomato & mozzarella, Penne Tomato Basil, salads, chicken parmigiana and rice balls. I'm probably missing some stuff but that's all I could recall. It was a little bit of a stretch to try and serve all the apps and dishes simultaneously to the whole table (a hallmark of stellar dinner service). Furthermore, I think we could've maybe used a 15% larger portion for the family style servings. I know the restaurant is Italian, but Americans can EAT.

We also ordered bottle service and again, it was a little tough for the waiter to mix and serve twenty (20) drinks beyond the first round. It's not the end of the world, but on subsequent rounds of drinks you would definitely have to stand up and go to the ends of the table to mix your own drinks. That put one in a little bit of an etiquette quandary (sit politely and wait, or do it yourself while leaning over other guests), but we adapted. It should be noted that the presentation for bottle service was always "over the top" with lights and a procession of beautiful ladies. Each birthday party had their moment in the spotlight.

I'll wrap this review up with a few final notes. I'd like to shout out my waitress on both occasions: Anne Marie. She was a consummate professional each time. First round drink success was due in large part to her. She actually had a birthday on the Tuesday before my first visit. I loved the fact that the entire waitstaff took a moment to celebrate her during the night. I hope that's a sign of a supportive workplace. Also, shoutout to security: One of them (I wish I got his name, but he was a tall Hispanic/Caucasian gentleman with a man bun) actually walked me to the restroom when I asked for its location. That's customer service tactic often encouraged, but rarely done. Valet service is great but I wouldn't mind parking my car. Lastly, the DJs were great but distinctly EDM/Dance specialists. I would've liked them to be a bit more adventurous with music genre selection.

Bottom line: If you want to celebrate a birthday, their Thursday night dinner parties are great! You'll have a good time though sadly, they shut things down promptly at 01:00 am. So if you're a New Yorker, this might feel a little early, but then again, you might be grateful for the extra time to cross the river and head back...

I would give less than 1 star for all of these if I could, but Google does not allow it. Last night my family and I (we were a party of 7) went to Bottagra to celebrate a birthday. We were seated outside in the heated tent, which was warm and nicely decorated for the holidays. They had a dj playing music and singing, his voice was lovely and played/sang a good variety of songs. The table ordered not long after our 7:15 pm reservations. We ordered 3 drinks, 2 soups and 7 entries. The drinks and soup came quickly and the staff was friendly and attentive. However, that was the end of the enjoyable evening. After the members of the party who had soup finished, the wait staff cleared their bowls and took everyone's bread plates, despite the fact that we still had bread on the table. Our waiter then informed us the kitchen was backed up, there were 2 tables ahead of us and our food would be out in 15 to 20 minutes. This was fine as we were not in a rush, and there to celebrate. Unfortunately, that information was a lie. Over an hour later, we not only didn't have our food, we watched way more than 2 other tables get their food. The dj must have known that the kitchen was behind and tried to help people forget the fact that they didn't have food because he started to change his music selection to more upbeat music and tried to get people to join into with singing and dancing. However, this then meant that the volume of his music had increased significantly and it was now impossible to have a conversation with the people sitting next to you. We flagged down our waiter to ask why it had been over an hour and we still had not gotten our food and his response was "it's not my fault." My aunt went to speak to the manager who said he would go check on the food, but 10 minutes later when we asked to speak to him again, he apologized and told us he would make sure our table the next one and it would be another 15 to 20 minutes. Considering it was now 9:30 (again our reservations were at 7:15), this was not acceptable and we got up and walked out. So we wasted 2 hours at this restaurant and most of us had no food other than bread. My family will never go back to...