Altobeli's Restaurant and Piano Bar — Restaurant in Johns Creek

Very disappointed. We’ve frequented Altobeli’s for years. I feel bad leaving a bad review on a place I generally categorize in the “like” column.

I have maybe sent three dishes back to the kitchen in my entire life and tonight was the fourth. I hope ownership see’s this and works towards finding a good chef who knows what he/she is doing in the kitchen. I want the old Altobelis back that can justifiably charge high prices for high-quality Italian cuisine.

We visited Altobeli’s to celebrate my mother-in-laws birthday. The server was absolutely fantastic, though the food extended beyond sub-par. It was very bad food.

We started the dinner with an encouraging calamari which was actually quite good. The warm goat cheese salad was tasty as well. My suspicion was piqued when the garlic bread came out and it seemingly had enormous diced chunks of garlic spread all over, absolutely bathed in oil. You had to pluck the bread out of the oil (butter?) and scrape copious amounts of garlic off with either a knife or fork. I ate two and had instant regret paired with ferocious dragon breath.

I ordered the Snapper a la Francese (against my instinct) because I really like Francese dishes. My mother in law ordered the same thing. The food came out in an expected time-frame, but upon first glance, the breading looked very strange. Almost soggy. I tried some of the noodles first which were acceptable though very watery. My mother-in-law and I looked at each other right as we both took our first bites of the food. The fish was very sour and had a very unpleasant taste. I’m not in the habit of eating spoiled fish but my mother-in-law told me that is what it tastes like. I could not take another bite. My wife’s baked ziti was very bland. She had me taste it and it was as if there was no seasoning or salt at all. It literally didn’t taste like anything which was a very odd sensation. My father-in-laws baked ziti was ice cold.

We informed our waitress who was very kind and responsive and she took our plates away and brought four new dishes, salad for my mother in law, spaghetti for my wife and father-in-law, and chicken Parmesan for myself.

The new salad was tasty, but the spaghetti was VERY watery. Almost more water than sauce. The chicken parm was breaded nicely and the chicken was very good, but the sauce was dreadful. It had no sweet flavor, no zest, no tomato flavor. It tasted like muted Italian seasoning with carrots. Very very strange. It made the meal inedible, and even made the mozzarella taste bad. Despite the chicken, I could not even finish a more than half of a chicken cutlet due to the strange sauce and watery pasta.

Our waitress was very understanding and comped the items we did not eat and took 30% off the bill, but honestly after being served spoiled fish I would have expected management to visit the table and comp the entire meal. The dinner was ruined and we walked down to Brusters to get the bad taste out of our mouth.

Very disappointing. I wish ownership would focus more on high-quality food than the...

To be straightforward- I believe my money would have been better spent at ANY other restaurant. I am not a picky person and try to speak positively about every situation. It's hard to find something positive about my experience about Altobeli's.

The atmosphere is OKAY. It is very cramped on the inside and hard to move around or get up without bumping into someone else. The bathrooms are an eyesore!

I was excited to encounter a Gluten Free menu was pleased to see so many other options for my guests. However, of the portions were very stingy, and the food was only mediocre. It wasn't bad, but I would not describe it as delicious.I had much higher culinary expectations for an "upscale" Italian restaurant.

Our waiter was one of the most unpleasant and demeaning waiters I have ever had. He was not friendly, did not smile, and was rushing us from the moment we sat down. When we asked him questions about the food, he talked to us like we should be embarrassed to ask!

Our dinner arrived very, very quickly (they were practically begging for us to get out of there) and before our plates were even finished, the checks appeared. We explained that we planned on having some drinks and possibly dessert, and that we wanted to listen to the music. It was supposed to start at 730 and as 8 rolled around, it still had not started. We had a round of cocktails, and then were ignored for about 15 minutes (they figured maybe the silent treatment would work?) and I had to get up and go find our waiter to ask about dessert. As our dessert came out, the music began. About 5 minutes later we were ASKED to LEAVE! The manager came over and said that people had reserved our table and had been waiting for an hour to sit down. If I had not been so shocked, I would have pointed out the MANY other empty tables of the same size AND the fact that he had told me over the phone that they did not accept reservations past 630pm.

Our total tab was over $300. I have never been so upset about spending $300 in my LIFE. I would have submitted a complaint to the manager, however, he's the one who kicked us out! I was disappointed and also embarrassed myself since my guests were my parents and my grandparents! We would have spent a lot more on cocktails, and we would have been willing to relocate if they really needed our specific table at that moment. I will never,ever make the mistake of going to Altobeli's again, and you could not pay me to recommend this restaurant to anyone else- unless they enjoy sub-par food, rude staff, and sitting so close to another person in the restaurant that you can hear them smacking their food.

Randy on the piano needs to pick that thing up and run away with it to a better restaurant. HE was the only enjoyable thing of our evening, and he deserves a MUCH better...

My experience at this place was the most disturbing and disgusting thing I have ever experienced at a restaurant (if that's what you want to call it) in MY LIFE!!! We arrived for a birthday dinner and we were late, due to the address and the GPS sending us in different directions. Upon arrival we entered the restaurant to be greeted by a waiter and then he directed us to our party. Unfortunately there was no more seating in the area and he stated that he could possibly try and work out a seating arrangement at the dinner table with our party. One of the waiters, which was extremely rude and abrasive stated 'Ya'll can't sit with them!' His entire approach was distasteful, which lead us in to asking for the manager. When we asked for the manager, the waiter that greeted us came back up and stated he was the manager. I then said 'Well I didn't know managers wore aprons and dressed as the waiting staff, but ok.'

The owner then came out, which he was a very nice man. He was very pleasant and extremely helpful. He did let us know that we wouldn't be able to sit with our party and we understood since it would be a very tight squeeze. So we managed at a table in the vicinity of our party. We were there for the wine tasting, which was almost over so we were only able to taste about three wines, but once we were seated and begin to listen to the music, we begin to enjoy ourselves. After eating and talking, we noticed we were the last one in our section and one of our guest asked 'what time do you guys close?' The waiter that was rude from the jump looked over and replied 'NOW!!!' Which then our guest asked again 'well what time do you all close?' The waiter replied 'RIGHT NOW!!' Yelling it across the dining room. This made me very upset because not only was he nasty to us when we arrived, he never managed to even fill our water glasses, ask if we needed anything else, or even address us in any manner that would be appropriate for customer service.

When I asked the waiter why he was so rude, he began to argue with me as if we were on a street corner. I would tell anyone that was going to consider this place, to NOT go. The owner was very pleasant, but he really needs to do some real soul searching for employees that are into good customer service verses being rude to customers and acting uncivilized!! I will NEVER go back to this...