North Italia — Restaurant in Henderson

They can succeed but need some improvement. Went for birthday dinner; first time to a North Italia. Expectations were high bc a great location and cool atmosphere. Not a great waiting situation before getting seated, small section inside the first set of doors that could hold a few parties but beyond that you’re in an awkward line inside or waiting outside in Vegas heat/cold/wind. No waiting benches.

Had reservations and got seated pretty quickly, five minutes or so. Had a large C- shaped booth which made it a bit tricky for everyone to talk to one another. The other tables were pretty tight together so if you want a more private setting go with a booth. Fairly loud on Thursday night with music, not sure if they play music all day. It was good music.

Food was a mixed bag. Started with grilled bread and a calamari. Both were good. The calamari didn’t have the tentacle bits, just the rings but good crust batter. We also got the zucchini chips which were good. Potato chip sized slices of zucchini served with an aioli. Good dip but chips were thin so it wasn’t easy to pick them up or dip them. They could be thicker.

For mains we had a smashed meatball ragu, chicken and mushroom pasta, scallops, and bolognese. We also got a short rib dish after we had to send the bolognese back. No dessert.

To start, the standard pasta noodle here is a bit different than what I have had elsewhere. The noodles are thick, almost too thick for some. Some might like the thicker noodle. The noodles are extra long macaroni because they were tubes instead of solid pastas. So if you don’t want a thick noodle choose carefully.

The meatball ragu was decent. It’s a “smashed” meatball which ended up being a meatball broken up with a spoon or something. This meant I had some large pieces of meatball bits mixed around while some bites had almost no meat. Might be good to have more evenly broken up bits, or just serve the whole meatball and let me break it up. The sauce itself was solid. It warmed up great the next day, maybe better than at the restaurant.

Fiancé had the chicken mushroom pasta. Much better than the red sauce dishes we had. She loved it. Came with a shorter pasta, thin strips of chicken and good mushrooms in a white sauce. Recommend this one. Also warms up great.

Mom had scallops. They put like 6-7 big ones. They had a crust on them which had some pretty hard bits in places, didn’t need a crust really. Scallops were tad fishy. Came with a good risotto. Sprinkled with some raw Brussel sprouts which was not needed. Overall a pretty good dish but could be improved a bit.

Then the bolognese…not what we expected. Usually bolognese is a thick meaty sauce with traditional noodles like spaghetti or penne. Here the noodles were flat and wide like a thin lasagna noodle. That’s fine but the sauce needs to be thicker. Sauce was thin, too thin and not meaty enough. The big issue was how similar tasting the sauce was to chef boyardee. Not trying to be mean but all of us who tried it ended up smiling at how closely it tasted like boyardee ravioli which I eat but don’t want to pay 26 bucks for. We exchanged it for short ribs.

Our waiter didn’t ask us why we wanted to change dishes. She had to know about the bolognese. Replaced the bolognese with the short ribs and that was a big improvement. The beef was tender and flavored well. Decent dish.

There was enough we enjoyed here to give them another chance someday. I hope they fix a few things and become a...

Let me start by saying I go to the North Italia location in Summerlin all the time.

I was very excited that North Italia was now open at GVR since it’s a lot closer to my house. I thought it may have been busy since they just did their grand opening so I made reservation in advance for a late lunch at 3:15pm on a Tuesday with OpenTable for 2 people. Another friend of mine also made a separate reservation at 3:15pm for her group, so we planned to meet at North just to say hello.

I arrive to the restaurant at 3:15pm and the hostess says it will be a couple of minutes to get sat (no problem). I go say hi to my friend who had the other reservation as she’s already been sat. We wait at the front door for a few minutes and then the hostess asks if we want to wait by the bar and starts to escort us to the bar area on their patio. There are other people also standing by the front door waiting to be sat, but our group was the only group asked to wait by the bar.

We then wait standing by the bar for almost 30 minutes till we got sat on the patio at 3:40pm. Not sure why we had to wait that long as we had a reservation and there were open tables.

We finally get sat and our server comes to the table. He takes our drink order, comes back to the table with our drinks and takes our food order. WE NEVER SEE OUR SERVER AGAIN. We saw our server twice in the first 5 minutes of getting sat and he never comes back to the table for the rest of our time there.

We order 4 things: Caesar Salad and Beef Carpaccio as appetizers. Pesto Pasta and Bolognese as entrees

We then have to wait over 30 more minutes after our order is taken as no food has come out. Usually I feel the salad comes out pretty quickly and the carpaccio not far behind. Again, our server is nowhere to be seen as well for these 30 minutes.

Our food finally comes to the table and they bring ALL of the food together, apps and entrees. Didn’t course anything out and we definitely wanted to enjoy our salad and carpaccio at our pace without having to feel rushed to eat it so our entrees didn’t get cold sitting on the table.

We asked the food runner to please hold the entrees in the kitchen till we were ready for them. They brought them back and we ate our appetizers. AGAIN, no sight of our server this entire time.

After appetizers were done, we waited for our entrees. Entrees arrived maybe 15 mins later which weren’t hot (but we definitely weren’t sending back to wait even longer). AGAIN, our server nowhere to be found.

Ordered the brookie sundae for dessert which was ok. Strawberry and chocolate ice cream was melted. Pistachio ice cream was fine. Came with small cups of sundae toppings which were fine. AGAIN, haven’t seen our server yet.

Finally wave down a different person to ask for our check. Paid our check and left. Total time at North Italia was 2 hours, which should have taken maybe 1 hour for the amount we ordered and weren’t trying to hang out and leisurely dine.

I would recommend staying away from this location for a while till they figure out their operational side of things. Not seeing our server for 1h30m of our time there is unacceptable.

I’ll give credit to the kitchen staff however because the food tasted good, but the bad service far outweighed...

This was our very first experience at a North Italia and I've been wanting to go for quite some time (years).

The hostess was so courteous and pleasant. She seated us near the kitchen and away from the entry, which was kind of nice.

The ambiance was nice. It's light and airy, with a lot of windows and beautiful natural light shining through. Our waitress was also pleasant, and I didn't catch her name. My husband was not impressed with her from the very first interaction, but I like to give waitstaff some grace especially when they just opened a location.

We were seated for a bit when she finally came to our table. We ordered some waters and a coffee. She swings by about ten minutes later with our drinks. I can already see the frustration with my husband's face because we were already seated right by the kitchen. Hid face said it all: it shouldn't take that long for beverages to be served. Maybe it was a new batch of coffee brewing...? Who knows.

She brought all drinks on one trip, but had to go back for the cream and sugar. By the time I was able to put them in my coffee, my coffee was already lukewarm. So much for that. I was starting to be frustrated myself.

My husband ordered the breakfast sandwich and I had the French toast. I drank all my coffee and water while waiting for our food. Our waitress was just standing at the side, peeked at our table, and turned around. To make it more obvious, I slid the cup to the edge of the table indicating I'd like more coffee. Fortuitously, a young man asked if I was done with my coffee, and we asked if we could get a refill. He nodded, went to another young man, and I caught them both staring in my direction. They both seemed lost. The young man returned, asked for what type of coffee I'd like to refill with and took my mug to refill inside the kitchen. Odd. Okay. Don't they have a coffee pot? He came back with a hot cup of coffee almost immediately and I was grateful.

Another 10 minutes had passed at this point, and our food finally arrived at our table. A whopping 40 minutes from when we had seated and placed our order, our food was finally served. 40 minutes for a sandwich and French toast. Nonetheless, the food was excellent and the plates were hot.

Our waitress stopped by twice: once when the food was served and immediately after the first bite. After that, radio silence. The nice guy (I presume cleaning/busboy?) that helped us had stopped by our table more than she did. Wild.

The entire experience took us a whopping one hour and 15 minutes for a sandwich, french toast, two water glasses and coffee. To add further insult to injury, my husband overheard our waitress saying how she is training another person. Yikes!

Tl;dr: the food was excellent. The service left much to be desired. Kitchen is slow. Took 1 hour and 15 minutes from seating to leaving for a sandwich, French toast, two water glasses and a...