Roberto's Ristorante & Pizzeria — Restaurant in Illinois

Oh Roberto's, you had such promise.

An elegant interior, nice wine glasses, and all the other trimmings of upscale dining welcome you to the antithesis of upscale.

As this is one of my traditionally long-winded write-ups, here's a summary for the attention disorder set: wait staff is on glue, bussers do a fine job, food may or may not be edible, soup's good, steal the steak knives, eat elsewhere.

Our group of about 20 were seated in a back room off the bar, near the kitchen entrance. Delightful surroundings got our hopes up for a similarly delightful meal. The problems started almost instantly, though. The only part of the experience that happened in a timely fashion was the delivery of the check.

Bread baskets had three small slices of italian bread and a couple of breadsticks. Apparently we were supposed to ration these meager tidings amongst the group.

Drink orders were scattershot. Our waitress took a few orders and vanished, only to return a good ten minutes later with no idea of who ordered what. Drink auctions are always fun, never mind the 13 other people waiting for something other than water.

Refills on those drinks? Fuhgetaboutit. Ain't happening unless you nag repeatedly.

Ordering was as disorganized as the drink orders. Two people took orders, often times asking the same person twice what they wanted, or not knowing who had ordered and who was still waiting. There are two surefire ways to work a table for orders: clockwise and counter-clockwise.

One person's pizza order came out 20 minutes before any other meal.

Everyone else's order came out together. They were all hot and accurately placed; a miracle given the sequence in which they were taken.

The food was hit-or-miss. Many people loved what they had; I hated the veal. It was salty and the meat extraordinarily tough. Very nice steak knife though; really classy. Seriously! The soups seemed to be universally enjoyed.

We sat around forEVER waiting for someone to come clear the plates. We probably would have had coffee and dessert, but none of us wanted to wait another hour to get that process going, so one of our party went to find someone in the bar to summon a server. Finally they showed up and cleared & bagged leftovers.

Look, I know as a server you're getting your 18% gratuity because nobody wants to be "that guy" and have it reduced, so you put your attention to other tables. Problem is, you served 4 people who'd been there before and 15 or so who hadn't, and many who will not likely return.

This is a Thursday night, at 6:45, folks. If you do choose to go here on a busy night, bring a snack and a flare gun, because chances are you could die in your seat and go unnoticed for a...

Roberto’s used to be a staple in our family. Both my grandparents and parents go to Roberto’s often and have been ordering pizza from here for decades. A large group of visiting family went to the restaurant with a reservation on a Saturday April 29th, and unfortunately it was a rotten experience. The older gentleman who was acting as the host was rude to my grandfather, despite the fact that he 87 years old that has been a loyal customer for many years. We had to wait for 30 minutes past our reservation time, which worried me because nobody thought to offer a chair to the 87 year old waiting with us nor was there any apology. While we were waiting, the rude host kept walking through the group of us to grab bottles of wine from the cabinet next to the bar, but he never looked at us or said excuse me. He also never apologized for yelling at my grandpa. He seemed to know the people sitting next to us and talked to them often throughout the night. I am usually pretty understanding when it comes to this kind of stuff and I realize it’s difficult to work with older grumpy people in busy restaurants. But I found his behavior appalling. If you cannot be professional and kind to your customers, than don’t be a host. Moreover, everyone who worked in the restaurant seemed to treat our group as if we were inconveniencing them for being there, and the stress was contagious throughout the restaurant. The food and drink was not good enough to make up for the impoliteness and ambiance. The waiter suggested an Italian beer to me that frankly tasted like Heineken but was more expensive than most other beers on the menu. We did not receive the correct drinks, all the appetizers we ordered, and ended up having to wait for over 2 hours to get our entrees. I ordered a medium rare steak which was well done and over cooked. I won’t be going back to Roberto’s again and would not...

TLDR: we liked 3 of the 4 dishes we had, components of one of the dishes we liked was missing. It was nearly impossible to flag down our waiter, the table was pretty cramped. However when we brought up a concern, the restaurant quickly corrected it so we left on a great note. And the sauce on the steak is probably one of the best sauces I've had.

Long version:

We were excited to finally come try this place, made reservations in advance and came in 5 minutes prior our reservation. No issues with parking, and we got seated promptly. Our server recommended the Misto griglia and listed the night's special, one in which we ordered. We also ordered one more pasta dish and planned to order the chocolate souffle. This is how it went.

9/10 Misto Griglia, did not disappoint at all, the dish was fresh and got us excited for the upcoming main courses

2/10 Spaghetti Carbonara Traditionale, I felt it was severely underseasoned and had a lumpy texture which did not sit right with me.

7/10 the night's special, Filet mignon with 2 Jumbo shrimps, mashed potatoes and asparagus. The plate we got was just the steak and potatoes, sauce and asparagus on a separate plate. Granted the sauce was divine and I wanted to just order the sauce home, but given that we were very excited for the Jumbo Shrimps - we were disappointed it was missing. We tried to flag our server who was really hard to catch, but at the end we got the shrimp when we were nearly done with the meal. We were told the cooks were new that night.

8/10 The Chocolate Souffle, was very good. We were not surprised as we were recommended to try it. We would just recommend anyone wanting to try it order it 20 minutes in advance, since there will be some cook time. It was a little too sweet, but great nonetheless.

The management fixed the carbonara issue and we did get our shrimp, so the night ended on...