Alex's Washington Gardens — Restaurant in Highwood

I've dined at WG several times. After my experience last night, I will never go back. First, we were seated 25 minutes after our reservation time. Despite rushing home from the city to make our reservation, we were willing to let that slide. Second, when our server "greeted" us she was just rude...as if she was irritated that she had to wait on us. Her affect and attitude created a tense environment. Third, our food (pasta and pizza) took 40 minutes to come out. And to make it worse, my food wasn't even close to being hot. When I asked our server to please heat it a little more, instead of apologizing and taking it back to heat, she said "well it just came out of the oven I don't know why you think it isn't hot enough." Seriously! Then...when it came back I took one bite and there were several hairs inside of the ravioli. When I called the server over again, she (clearly agitated) said, " they are so careful in the kitchen I'm not sure how that happened." Clearly Not!!! We asked for our check to leave since none of us really had an appetite anymore. My daughter brought home leftovers and decided to have it for lunch today. She bit into her ravioli to find a huge egg shell. The size of a quarter. It was so gross. I really don't complain at restaurants. My yelp reviews are usually to praise businesses. But I'm just so disappointed in WG. Had our server not been so unpleasant, I would probably not be writing this. But the whole experience was just so negative. WG is the celebration place that I go to with the ladies I was with last night. I'm sad that I don't think it can be our...

Alex's Washington Gardens is a great place to grab some Italian food, despite a few issues.

In particular, the marinara sauce on the spaghetti and bolognese used for the lasagna were a little watery, and you can see the separation when the dishes are brought out. Despite this, the flavor of the bolognese was good and I especially enjoyed the texture of the ingredients. The marinara, however, was a little too sweet and consequently left with a muted acidity; just a little flat.

Service was very friendly and pleasant. Takeout seems to be a sizable part of their business and the result (for me) was very long wait times for food, as well as staff multitasking and not attending to tables as much.

The space itself was cramped. One large family can (and did) turn the space from a relaxed atmosphere to a roaring one where you find yourself yelling to keep up. The booths are a bit comical in that they are barely able to seat two per side. I often had to balance on the outside edge of the seat to eat, which wasn't the most comfortable experience.

For casual patrons, I suspect that AWG is a hit - there's plenty to enjoy here and I'd love to come back to try their pizza. Those that are detail-oriented and looking for a little more nuance in their meal, however, may be...

Hello, my wife and I stopped in here on 8/18 (after a very disappointing visit to the Garlic Fest), and we weren't impressed:

1. Overall the place seems very rundown, with worn wood, damaged walls, etc. The mens bathroom in particular was an issue. Very small, and the door needs to be replaced.
2. The bread was good, but the olive oil and parmesan were served in to-go cups, which was pretty tacky.
3. The calamari was good
4. The spaghetti my wife ordered was OK, but it came with marinara sauce and not the bolognese sauce she ordered. My entree was fine.
5. The markups on wine, given the reasonable entree costs were high. We ordered the Frescobaldi chianti, for $56/bottle. We buy this all the time for our house and it's about $18 at Binnys, so this is a 3X markup, which seems high.

Overall our experience was "ok", but we probably won't be back with better choices up and...