Cristo's Bistro — Restaurant in Holly Springs

With 4.5/5, This place seems to be doing pretty well - It looked absolutely beautiful going in (the music was a bit loud, but ah well.) The host said they were closing soon so they were keeping everyone on one side of the restaurant - this was odd, but understandable, albeit a bit crowded. (an hour before close.) We opened up the menu as usual and got bread, salads, and sodas. I ordered the cheese tortellini carbonara with peas & my other half ordered the penne al a vodka with prosciutto. It sounded absolutely great. It came out and it was piping out - steaming. Awesome, right? Not really. We're both pretty bad about not wanting to say anything about food, but less than 1/2 way through the waitress (who was very nice) came over because she saw us awkwardly picking at our food, and asked if anything was wrong. We told her - There was no flavor and I heard another table say there was no flavor as well - it tasted like water. Both of the dishes tasted almost exactly the same, except a tiny little bit of what tasted like pink sauce on the penne dish. A little bit, otherwise - The food was extremely oily, it was just piling on top of the sauce, the water & oil was separating, and our stomachs were hurting. HURTING. Hurting like when you eat pizza, but minus the bread. It felt like we drank vegetable oil. I ended up filling my diet coke up with carbonara sauce, luckily in an almost empty restaurant. They ended up comping our meal, which was nice, we tipped the server, she did absolutely nothing wrong - I ended up being in the bathroom upchucking a bit more and a few times on the way back from the walk from harris teeter. My boyfriend was sick, but not throwing up, and I'm not going to go into detail on the kind of sick he was. I don't know what happened this night given the ratings, but this was bad. Just make the drive to somewhere else. Order in. If you're not going to do that, take tums, dramamine, miralax with immodium to balance it out, and maybe a fleet.

Hopefully that was just a bad day for the cooks, or something. Phew.

PS. The star is for the server. The restaurant, nein. Nill. Zero.

Update: I guess the owner is also extremely rude. If you run through the reviews, she has a smart comment to anyone that says something she doesn't like. This place touts women-owned, but the woman who owns it has a sour attitude towards other women. I'd love to hear what she...

UPDATE: want to say we have been back to Cristos a few times. The staff has been nothing but pleasant and the food is absolutely delicious!!! A few of our favorites is the cheese pizza, pepperoni pizza, grandmas pizza, the bruschetta, chopped salad, Chicken with the cream sauce and peppers, chicken piccata, and quite a few specials that we have tried. Keep up the great work!! This place is without a doubt the best pizza in Holly Springs and a great restaurant. Since giving it another try, we have been back once a week!

So we have been frequenting Cristo's since they have opened. We think the food is very good and up until our last few visits the service has always been good. Being a small business owner myself and having an understanding of the employee shortage, etc., I did let a few customer service issues of our last visits slide. However, two of the young lady employees were just incredibly and unjustifiably rude this weekend, starting from the phone call my wife made placing the over $100 pick up order. You can feel the eye rolling and utter lack of caring about the business thru the phone as my wife was trying to place our order. My wife was extremely nice and patient to the young lady and it was not reciprocated in any manner. I go in to pick up the order (it was early and no other patrons were in the restaurant, the employees in no way seemed busy, in fact the young girls were standing around talking to each other). I was not greeted in any way. I had to do all the talking. While I was waiting I observed a middle aged employee working her tail off while the two young ladies were not. One young lady even told the person clearly working hard to make sure she didn't miss anything when she swept. The lack of respect was astounding starting with my wife, then myself and even an elder coworker. At any rate, my order was taken to a table off to the side and the young lady walked away without saying a word. I was left to assume that it was my order?? So I'm relegated to ask her and I got a nod. So basically though the food here is excellent, I don't know how comfortable I feel contributing $100 almost every week for such a lack of respect. I don't need anyone to roll out the red carpet, but a simple smile, hello, thank you, have a good day would have gone...

Wow what a horrible place to eat. Arrived at restaurant at 5:00 PM EST on Friday to beat the dinner rush. Arrived not another table to be seen in restaurant. We ordered around 5:15 just before a second table showed up and the place got busy. We had waited till 6 before asking why we had no food and all the other table after us had theirs. We were told by the waitress she will check and came back stating the pizza oven was backed up and our order just got in to be cooked. Well an hour and half later now rounding 6:30 PM still nothing no pasta no kids meals nothing. So we asked to speak with a manger to share our concerns of no food for more than 1.5 hours. The manager came about 15 min later Gus a blazing screaming that our pizza takes 30 min to cook, fine but that should of been an hour ago. As we asked about the other tables he stated that “do you see any pizza on their tables?” Which we didn’t but that was very rude speaking that it should of had out pizza around 5:30-5:45 not 6:30. The kicker was after we told him he was being rude and we will not continue to dine and we are leaving our pizza was magically done and we could take it home if we paid for it according to the manager. So what was it we just got in the order it took 30 min or we were forgot and lied to over and over again as he stalled to finish our food?

I would not recommend to go here and other tables walked out as we did to not having any service from their staff.

I would share pictures but only received beverages to share. And I do plinth of reviews good and bad and this was bad, very very bad service one of the worst I...