Ascione Bistro Hyde Park — Restaurant in Hyde Park Township

A great friend of mine chose Ascione to celebrate his birthday this past weekend. We have dined at Ascione before in a group setting of 5 ( Aug 2022) and it was an enjoyable, tasty, and memorable experience. At this time the restaurant was jammed packed with patrons, the service was impeccable, and the food was great. We were all impressed by the vibes ,aesthetic, and fresh flavor fusion of this restaurant as we anticipated coming back. Our second visit was not so great! Here are a few things that did not go well during our 12/4/22 visit:

Service: Server was rude - she did not pass the vibe check.. She appeared to be ok with a predominantly spanish speaking table, when non-spanish speaking guests arrived her attitude changed instantaneously -Service: Upon taking our orders the server refused to walk around to each guest to hear our orders clearly, instead she asked us to yell our orders across a table of 8 Service: Service was slow, we waited forever for everything. My Cappucino was removed from the table before I finished it without anyone asking me if I was done. We were cut off from Happy Hour before being given a fair and adequate warning. When we raised this to the attention of management, we were given a dry ' cmon guys we have another big group coming in... " -Service + DEI: My friend celebrating his birthday and his male partner were laughed at and made a mockery of upon expressing affection for one another by Ascione waitstaff/mgmt. NOT COOL! DEI: There were NO African-American servers, the only visible African-American employee was the Waiter's assistant/ restaurant attendant - a complete transition from our first visit when the staff was VERY diverse. I found the lack of diversity surprising, and disappointing given the location of this establishment Sanitation:The waiter's assistant/ restaurant attendant was not covid conscious as he contaminated our drinking glasses several times - touching the tip of the water carafe into everyones glass - I assume this was being done throughout the restaurant. I imagine he did not have a food&sanitation license as this is not best practice esp in the thick of Flu/Covid/RSV season; ick. Food Quality - we ordered prawns and oysters. Let's just say both were "extra fresh" as you could taste the sand in both dishes. Additionally, the nutella french toast was dry and burnt and covered in whipped cream, I am assuming in an attempt to hide the fact that the dish was indeed dry, and burnt.

Final takeaways :

There was a gentlemen there ( I believe he was the host) that heard out our grievances and concerns. He was diplomatic, professional and agreed to share our feedback with management. He and the mgr worked to remove the automatic gratuity from the bill which we disputed as our server was subpar to say the least. The mgr met with us before we left and responded to our feedback regarding our server by saying " yeah, I know , no one likes her." YIKES! I believe Ascione has great potential. I understand we are living in a time when waiststaff is incredibly scarce and many establishments are working with what they have. Possibly some additional coaching, and training will help restore this place to what it...

Told “Never Return to My Restaurant”

I was excited to learn the former chef from South Loop restaurant Gioco had opened a new restaurant in Hyde Park. We’re underserved here, and as a long-time Hyde Parker I was hoping Ascione Bistro would become our new “go-to” neighborhood place. Boy, was I in for a surprise.

So, my spouse made reservations to dine at 8:15 Saturday night after the Hyde Park Jazz Festival. When we arrived right on time at 8:15, the harried host told us that we were late for our 8:00 reservation and there was no table for us, that we should have called to let them know we’d be late. We objected that our reservation was actually for 8:15, but got the feeling that what the host really wanted was for us to leave since the restaurant was over busy. But he said we could wait by the bar and a table would be ready in 10 minutes.

Well, there was nowhere to wait. The four stools at the tiny bar were occupied, leaving us to stand in the hallway to the kitchen next to a stack of chairs and the bar’s server station, which was in front of a cabinet the staff kept opening. We were clearly in the way; it was very uncomfortable. At that point the host offered us complementary drinks, but we declined since we didn’t want to hold drinks in the spot we were standing. He seemed irritated.

After 10 minutes of waiting and still no table, my spouse tried to talk to the host again, wanting to straighten out what had happened to our reservation, showing him the 8:15 reservation confirmation. That’s when the host went off – telling my spouse not to raise their voice, which wasn’t the case. From that point on the host kept insisting we were raising our voices, which we weren’t, and would not respond to anything we said except to get angrier and angrier. We were flabbergasted. A passing waiter tried to intervene: when we asked what we had done wrong and why the host was behaving like this, the waiter said that the host was under a lot of stress. At that point the host ordered the waiter not to talk with us and told us to leave “his” restaurant and never return!

We still don’t understand what we did to warrant the host’s anger and abuse. All we did was try to find out how our reservation got lost, since we had received a reminder text a few minutes before we arrived and thought they should know there might be a problem with their reservation system. Instead the host tried to blame us and became indignant when we questioned what happened.

Maybe the food here is good, but we felt sad and humiliated by how we were treated. It ruined an otherwise enjoyable day. We certainly do not recommend anyone else patronize...

These people are honestly weird. We came as a party of 4 because our group was no longer a party of 10 and on their menu and website it says if the 5+ people are being served then an automatic 20% gratuity will be added. They added the automatic charge anyway and when we raised the issue, the waiter wanted to act a bit sassy and the manager wanted to play dumb and argue more than actually help by just simply taking the charge off as a gesture of good customer service. So we dropped it to avoid going back and forth longer than needed. Even after we paid our tab but still wanted more bottles no one paid attention to us like we were getting the cold shoulder until we had to stop one of the table runners to be served while they went out of their ways to check on everyone else. The food is already mid but the predatory charge honestly did it for me. This is my second time here and still not an enjoyable experience. The first time we were here last summer we had to fight off yellow jackets and press them to give us a seat change being that they did not inform us that they have a Yellowjacket problem outdoors and didn’t take much precautions to protect customers from them being that one of my friends got stung. Didn’t say anything on here to spare them. Never coming back here. If it were my choice I personally wouldn’t have chose to patronize this place, not worth my money.

Edit literally minute later lmfao: He knew they messed up so the manager was already seeking for a negative review. Came to our table pressing us, angry about the review because he didn’t like that I told the truth about our experience. Because he wants to be an egotistical a-hole he took away our bottomless mimosas that was already paid for, even our water and told us to leave. Because of a review! Please go somewhere where they respect their customers and go above and beyond to make sure their customers are satisfied. The facade they have up is so transparent like don’t fall for it. Instead of doing your job you’re sitting on your phone looking for negative reviews so you can come at people and retaliate. That’s grounds for a lawsuit if you don’t know. And if you were wondering we were a group of black girls and yes that disrespectful person for a...