Mangiare Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Independence

My husband is half Southern (Rome) Italian. His father, who emigrated to the USA after the 2nd World War, was a chef and passed his southern Italian cooking abilities on to his son. He fondly remembers that his parents owned two Italian Restaurants in the early 60's. My husband makes, and we can, his own spaghetti sauce and it is amazing. The sauce has to be amazing to make other amazing dishes like eggplant parmesean. My husband is an awesome cook and very picky about all food, but Italian food in particular. We were a bit hessitant to try Mangiare Italian Restaurant as we know what the real deal should taste like and everybody else is going to be cutting corners to save money.

I ordered the Meat Ravioli and my husband ordered the Lasagna. He told me that if the Lasagna is "right" everything else should be pretty good. First of all, the portions were very small for the price. Anywhere in Portland those portions would have been much larger for the same price. We spent $30 on dinner. Soup and salad were seperate and not included in the dinner price. The Meat Ravioli was not the quality I am used to. There were about 6 ravioli's in there and a little bit of sauce on top with a very small amount of parmesean. No other cheese at all. The sauce had a "bite" to it that I'm not accustomed to in my husband's authentic cooking. His Lasangna was the worst he had ever tasted, but he said it is actually worse than lasagna he has tasted in the national chain italian restaurants. Lasagna is layered with Ricotta, other cheeses, and sauce in between the noodles. This piece of "Lasagna" from Mangiare had nothing in between a whole bunch of lasagna noodles with a few bits of chopped sausage pieces toward the bottom of it and a small amount of mozzerella cheese, which was the only cheese in it. He said it was very dry and lacked the basic cheese of Ricotta which that dish is known for. He said it was as cheap as it possibly could be.

Needless to say, we will not be eating...

The food was amazing! I was with a party of 7 and everyone of us loved our meals. The table service was, however, less than satisfactory.

First, we called ahead for a 7pm reservation due to the size of our group. We all arrived together a couple of minutes before 7pm. As we entered the restaurant we watched the wait staff give away our reserved table to a party of 7 that just walked in with no reservation. ( You may wonder how I know that. Well if you go in this place you will see that when 14 people all cram into the entryway, you are very close together and can hear anything anyone says.) We heard several of them remark how lucky they were to walk right in and have a table ready. Staff just looked at us blankly when we inquired. We waited for half hour. Once we got to the table we ordered drinks and our meals. After an hour waiting for our meals to arrive we were about to go back and cook our own meals. They didnt even bring the bread basket to us until we asked for it, 35 mins in to the wait. They had previously told us it was always served while you wait for your meal; as an appetizer. They just said, "Oops. We forgot about that." No sorry or anything. Once the food arrived we were all happy with the food. So, now you have to decide what you are willing to put up with for...

Have gotten take out from here many times and the food has always been extraordinary. But today we decided to eat in the restaurant and we may never eat there again after the awful experience. The service was slow and horrible. It was explained to us that our meals were slow to come out of the kitchen because take out orders take priority. We had to ask repeatedly for things because the waitress kept wandering off to do tasks such as organizing menus and forgetting our requests. When my husband was about 2/3 through his plate he found a large peice of twisted metal in his food. When this was brought to the waitresses attention, she shrugged and said she was the front of house manager and had nothing to do with the back of house. There was never an apology made as we were told we would have to wait to talk to the cook. When I spoke up about having to wait further after all the waiting we had to endure during our entire experience I was interrupted so she could make excuses for her poor service. All this was very disappointing because we have enjoyed the food here so much prior to this. We just don't think we can enjoy or support an establishment that is this careless with the food preparation or is this unconcerned with their customers regardless of how great the...