Ciro's — Restaurant in Houston

6/27/25. 5:30 reservation First let me preface this review with this was our anniversary dinner. I reserved our table a week in advance, commenting it was our anniversary & when I called to confirm it after I received a text message to do so, I reminded the hostess who answered to please seat us away from the kitchen & bar, we wanted a quieter table ( she didn't provide a name but had an accent). She said she would make note of that & thanked me for confirming. We arrived a few minutes early & 3 young women were at the hostess stand. We said hi but not a single greeting from either of them. One hostess was staring at her eye make up in a small green mirror & literally turned away from us. Another hostess grabbed menus & walked us to a room off the bar & seated us under a TV. We tried to get her attention that this isnt a quiet spot but she walked off . My husband said let's just wait until the server arrives & go from there. Our server Karla took our drink order, delivered our drinks then disappeared for 20 mins. We almost walked out at that point. When she returned I actually said to her " I feel like you forgot about us & maybe we need to move to another area". She didnt have an answer for where she disappeared to. She took our order and walked away. Now things just got worse from there. Literally 7 different times while we were at our table various bar staff including what I believe is a bar manager ( he wore a gray apron) kept opening the wine cabinet directly behind my husband's chair, bumping into to it on a couple of occasions. Never once did any of those staff say excuse me, I'm sorry ...nothing. When I tried to get the attention of the man in the apron he ignored me speaking something in Spanish to the 2 other servers with him. I had hoped a floor manager would have visited our table ( seeing as most normally do, especially for special occasions) but no manager ever checked in on our visit. Had they I would have asked to be moved. The food was good, so at least we have something good to say. All in all we probably won't return. Attention to detail means something, attention to your guests means something, ignoring a request & being placed in the bar area under a TV after requesting a quiet table 3 days prior shows me the staff working the hostess stand doesn't care. Placing us directly in front of a wine cabinet that obviously gets a lot of traffic isnt my definition of a quiet area either. Actually that table really shouldn't be there, it just a disaster waiting to happen. Fortunately my husband tries to keep his cool but had it been a guest with a short fuse I'm certain an unpleasant exchange would occur after the 2nd or 3rd cabinet door bumped the chair. With so many dining options in this city having good food isn't the only thing a restaurant needs to provide. Having a staff that knows customer service is the other half of success a restaurant needs.

This goes down in the books as the worst for dining experiences, anniversary or not. Sorry Ciro but your staff, not the food, a bad experience. $140 better spent...

My family & I visit Ciro's this past Monday to celebrate my daughter's birthday. I made reservations days ahead of time but ended up needing to push back by 45m the day of. The host was nice & had no problem revising my reservation.

Once we arrived, we were warmly greeted & taken to our table. Our waiter, Allen, came over to us not even two minutes later for our drink order. I ordered the Ciro's margarita on the rocks & my wife ordered the Kentucky Mule.

Both drinks were strong. The alcohol, for us, overpowered the drinks. We could not enjoy the other flavors/notes because they were so boozy. I'm fully aware that some people like/prefer their drinks that way, but not us. Not horrible, not great, just drinkable.

Our waiter Allen was attentive & kind. All 5 of us ordered our entrees. I had the Linguine Pepa, my wife ordered the Potato Gnocchi Milano, my daughter ordered a 3 topping pizza, & my parents ordered from the 3 course dinner special. Everyone else seemed to enjoy their food. However, my entree was a complete disappointment. The white wine butter sauce was nowhere to be found in my dish. I only had 3 small shrimp on top & overall, the flavor was seriously lacking. The noodles were oily & flavorless. I was in such shock because everyone's dish looked & smelled so good! I tried to jazz it up some by adding salt, pepper, freshly grated Parmesan & even asked for a side of Alfredo sauce to add to my dish, but there was literally no flavor. I was severely disappointed & joked with my waiter because it was his recommendation.

By this time, I was unhappy with everything I had ordered. I decided to ignore my best judgement, & order dessert. I got an affogato & chocolate walnut chip cookie. The affogato was great. Really almost impossible to mess that up lol However, my cookie was forgotten. I never got it sadly.

We were celebrating my daughter's birthday & several waiters(?) came to our table to sing happy birthday in (I'm guessing) Italian. They also brought her a free ice cream cookie sandwich which made her entire night! That was so incredibly sweet & kind of them. I was not expecting anyone to sing whatsoever & was so pleased that they did! It truly made my daughter's night.

I give 4 stars because the staff was so kind & sweet to us, including our waiter. I'm unsure if I would dine here again, but if I do, at least I know the customer...

Skip this hole. Before the new building this place was decent. Food was better than Olive Garden or Carrabas, not quite a good as a nice spot in town. But more affordable priced for frequent visits. Since the new building we have been three times. (The first was right after they reopened, so when it wasn’t great we figured maybe they were struggling to restaff and get their groove back.) The last two times were in August 2023 and both visits were absolutely awful. The service was fine—relatively attentive and polite (although not at the bar where we sat once waiting for our party to arrive—we were ignored for almost 20 minutes by three bartenders). The food was almost inedible. The pasta (we tried lasagne, penne, spaghetti and ravioli, this was universal) is so overcooked it is pure mush in your mouth. Just a nasty paste. The sauces are all very bland and flavorless. The bread was even just meh. The salads were iceberg mostly and kinda wilty. The cocktails were obscenely overpriced, very little alcohol and way too much overly sweet mixers. The desserts were meh too. We had some chocolate thing and it was just ok. Still slightly frozen in the center so I guess not house made? And anyone who knows anything about gelato knows theirs is trash just from looking at it (based on how they store it) Even the atmosphere and seating arrangements are not as comfortable or pleasant. Used to have a cozy romantic grotto type feel. Now it has that “every mediocre chain restaurant from the 2000s” soulless quality. We used to love this place and came here frequently during the week. But it just never got its mojo back after the rebuild and Covid I guess. Too bad. I can’t imagine they will last much longer, but then again, the area gets so much traffic maybe that is all that is needed to keep such a low quality...