Costa's Mediterranean Cafe — Restaurant in Hoover

I travel for a living so I dine out a lot and I have to say that my experience at Costas last night was the absolute worst I've ever had in any restaurant anywhere in the World. My kids and I enter the building at approximately 6:30 pm on a Wednesday night and it was surprisingly crowded. Not full, but crowded. We were almost immediately seated, on the way to our table I couldn't help but notice the large number of unclean tables. When I say "unclean" I don't mean that they just hadn't yet been wiped off, I mean tables full of dinner plates, silverware and glasses. Apparently the concept of the servers pre-busing tables (removing plates once someone is finished with them) hasn't quite been taught to the staff at Costas. Right away my daughter unrolls her silverware from her napkin and realizes that the silverware is filthy, not just sort of spotty, I am talking full on chunks of food stuck to the fork. We were sitting there for 10 min or more without having been greeted and I'm discussing what I may order. Both of my kids ask, "Where did you see that on the menu" and it's then that we all realize that I'm the only one with the dinner menu, everyone else has been given lunch menus. At this point I go to the hostess and explain about the incorrect menus, dirty fork and lack of having been greeted. She sends me back to my table without handing me menus even though I had returned to her the lunch menus. A couple of minutes later a server approaches our table and asks, "Ya'll know what ya'll want yet"? Literally, that's all she said, not "Hi, my name is...." or "I"m sorry you had to wait...." simply, "Ya'll know what ya'll want yet" is all we got. I said to her, "No we don't know what we want because we've not been given dinner menus but we'd like something to drink, we've been here for 15 min so far" to this she replies to me, "Well I'm coming all the way over here from the other side" and I said, "I was just telling you". As she stormed off she says back to me, in the rudest voice imaginable, "Well I'm just telling you!" I immediately jump up and follow her across the dining room trying to get her attention which she couldn't help but knowing yet she continues to walk away from me. Once I finally catch up to her I demand to speak to a Manager and she is again unbelievably rude to me. As I'm waiting to speak to the Manager my kids approach me and say they are leaving to go somewhere else. I let them know I'll catch-up with them after speaking to the Manager. About 5 min later the Manager comes out of the kitchen, I approach him and say, "I just wanted to tell you why we are leaving and will never be back here" followed by the story of what has just transpired. In what I can only describe as the action of an bobble-head doll he stands there listening to my story, not once speaking a single word. He does not even attempt to make any sort of apology or offer any remediation to the situation. At that point I see where the complete lack of customer services skills his staff is learned from. So if you're looking for an overpriced meal in a filthy establishment where the workers find you to be more of an annoyance than an asset to the business by all means give this place a try. Judging from the total lack of cleanliness I'd advise you to go ahead and take Imodium prior to...

My family was there last night for a dinner the waitress you can tell did not want to work I guess we had to tell her to leave straws on the table we had to ask her for napkins we had to ask her for an extra plates so that we can share the bread that she put on the table she brought our salads without the appetizer that we ordered To share amongst each other she just didn’t have no will to want to work yesterday it was horrible then to top it all off she Musta came to our table about four times for our order didn’t even give us a chance to look through the menu every 10 seconds she kept coming to the table and we were like, We will call you over when we are ready. Finally we were ready and we ordered I specifically told her I wanted the Lasagna I ask her is it ricotta lasagna because I don’t eat meat she said there’s two kinds yes you can get the cheese lasagna I said that’s what I want because otherwise I’ll order the cannelloni so I ordered the Cheese lasagna after we ate the salads and the appetizer and the bread I couldn’t eat my meal so I got it to go box and figured will eat it at home either tomorrow or my son I’ll have it when I got home my son of course took the food and started eating one bite and he spit it out he said mom there’s meat in this lasagna he showed it to me and there was meat everywhere chunks of meat she lied to me there was no cheese lasagna and there is no cheese lasagna I’m so upset what a waste of money when they open today I’m bringing it back and they are giving me either cannelloni or my money back for warning make sure you get a waitress that wants to work the only reason why she got a tip is because my brother-in-law is a gentleman and he said you never know what they’re going through so just give it to them anyway if it was up to me she would’ve got a dollar tip she did not deserve anything she really deserves to be trained again and a little bit of manners I know it was late and I know she wanted to go home but she didn’t have to take that table she could’ve gave it to someone else she wanted to make the money while she should’ve treated Us with respect and did her job the right way and she would’ve got a lot more than she did. But she got $20 anyway And Costas got a bad reputation I won’t go back...

Because the owner won't settle for me being tactful and simply leaving a 2-star review, here's the visit in a nutshell:

No one came to greet us late at lunch midweek when no one was there so we stood around for 10 mins waiting to have anyone acknowledge us whatsoever.

Tried to make small talk with the waitress but it was clear she didn't want to be there, let alone deal with her customers so that was a bust.

The Italian food is basically cafeteria style, Olive Garden food jam-packed with calories and grease but no actual flavor or substance to speak of. It's a lot of food for your money, despite being pricy for a lunch menu, but I'd prefer paying even more money for less food provided it was decent caliber.

The tiramisu I ordered to go was still frozen an hour later when we got back to our office. It was clear they just stockpiled em in a freezer in back and nothing was fresh. Even if it had been fresh, it was poorly made and dry as a bone.

The waitress never cleared any of the plates for a half dozen people until after we left so we sat there talking over about 16 dirty plates and a half pound of flavorless bread.

The place needs to be shut down like the one in Trussville because, despite a tad higher health code rating, it was still run down.

Hopefully the owner will be satisfied with the thoroughness this...