Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Hesperia

Where do I even start? I unfortunately made reservations here for my entire family (group of 13) to celebrate my mom’s birthday. From the moment we got there, the waitress seemed to be in a bad mood. She waited 30 mins, yes, an entire half an hour to take our order. We didn’t even get bread at that point. Then we found out that in addition to being CASH ONLY (which is insane, it’s 2023) they also don’t split checks. This made it complicated. I really wish we would have left at that point, but we all ordered and couldn’t wait to get good food after some of the reviews I’d read. To say the food was bad would have to be a huge understatement. When I say 10 out of the 13 people who got food HATED it, I’m not exaggerating. And we are NOT PICKY. I don’t know what happened with their food today (this was my first time) but it was beyond disgusting. The scallop scampi was so fishy, when I had my mom and sister taste it they literally spit it out. It was SO salty and tasted like it had gone bad. Then several people ordered the chicken fettuccini alfredo and some how THAT tasted fishy!! We think some of their sea food must have gone bad and the juice got into the Alfredo sauce? All I know is nearly all of us didn’t eat more than a feels bites. I essentially paid $400 for garlic bread and iceberg salad. But what added insult to injury was how terrible the service and atmosphere was. The waitress was so grumpy and annoyed the entire time. We paid for all the food we didn’t eat so I’m not sure why she was upset. Just the fact we were a big party seemed to annoy her. She then added a 20% gratuity to the bill - which I normally tip 25% but tonight she didn’t even deserve 10. Literally none of us will ever be coming back and I am FLOORED that this place has the reviews it does. It’s literally NASTY and incredibly overpriced.

Update: 6 out of the 13 of us got food poisoning (pretty much anyone who ate some of the...

This restaurant is considered by many, to be a gem in the High Desert. It serves authentic, homemade, Italian dishes and is cute and cozy inside. The food is very good but I will explain my reason for 4 stars, in fact, I almost gave them 3 stars but they did gladly correct one of my issues. First off, this place is "cash only". In today's society, cash only is completely inconvenient. Depending on how big your dinner party is, you would need to be carrying a lot of cash if you didn't plan ahead. As it was, my husband and I decided to go there unplanned, found out it was cash only and I had to leave in the beginning of our meal to run and get cash. They do have an ATM machine inside the restaurant, but there is a $1.50 fee. Second, I asked for linguine pasta instead of spaghetti and I got spaghetti... (I don't like spaghetti). Thirdly, while the food WAS good, it was baked a little too long so as to have a lot of burnt areas all around the dishes and it was on the very dry side. I asked for more sauce (because it was so dry, from being... oops, left in the oven too long) and they wanted to charge me extra for the sauce. I said, "I don't think I should be charged for extra sauce when this was obviously baked too long and I was supposed to have linguine.". They graciously agreed and brought me more sauce, free of charge. Meanwhile, I decided to just keep the spaghetti and not hassle with that issue and the waiter came back and told me it was his fault that I didn't get the linguine because he did see that I did order it on the ticket and he just put the order in wrong. That made me feel a...

This was my second time visiting after a good experience around the first time.

However it seemed as though they were doing everything wrong on purpose or maybe they were annoyed that I was there with my family.

The salad came out just fine as expected however it took 45 minutes of not seeing the minestrone until I asked because I saw another table received their minestrone.

Apparently they forgot to put our order in the minestrone took another 15 minutes to arrive.

My lasagna arrived 10 minutes after that which means that a plate that takes 25 minutes to cook took over an hour and 10 minutes to arrive.

They gave me some bread only because another table didn't want the bread so they gave me somebody else's leftovers.

The lasagna came out nearly charred and black all around an up top.

The shrimp Alfredo for $30 should have had more than five shrimp and 10 noodles it was very poorly prepared and executed.

The chicken piccata looked like they grabbed some chicken from the trash at Chick-fil-A put it out in the sun to dry deep-fried it, let it dry then put it in the microwave then threw it on our plate.

They did they didn't even have the decency to offer as a discount for the obscene amount of waiting and the inappropriate late submission of our order.

Needless to say, we will not be returning to this...