Anthony's Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Kansas City

Anthony's has not been the same since Covid. Since this used to be one of our favorite restaurants, we decided to give them a 2nd chance and made a reservation for NYE before a night on the town. We were told they had no tables sooner than 7:30 and when we arrived, the front dining room had multiple empty tables. Even with a reservation, dressed to the nines, they led us back to the back room and attempted to seat us there until I said something. What was that all about? Our waiter that evening was totally dropping the ball. I understand getting good help now is hard but seriously... my boyfriend ordered a drink and asked for 2 limes with it. They could not make the drink I ordered so I asked if they could do a lemoncello martini. His drink came with no limes, I received straight liquor in a martini glass that was undrinkable. When we finally got our waiter and asked for the missing limes, he said, "I didn't know you wanted them for your drink." What?! I reordered another drink , and Italian Margarita and they brought it to me in a Budweiser glass with a straw like I was dining in a pool hall. The limes never came so we stopped a bus boy and asked him to help. He was fabulous. We ordered an appetizer that never came and our dinner was not what we would typically expect from here. They have scaled down the menu considerably and the options are slim. There is no angel hair option as a side, only linguine. Terrible. I ordered the lemon chicken and they brought my side of linguine heavily sauced with sugo... First, you do not serve a side of red sauce with a dish that is a butter or cream sauce. Second, what did you do to the sugo? It now is so sickeningly sweet it tastes like Chef Boyardee. Lastly, there was a rowdy group at the bar that keep cheering at every person who walked in the entire time we were there. It was disruptive and got old fast as we came to dine at a restaurant, not a pool hall. What happened to this place? We miss the...

Our friends that have lived in Kansas City for decades, invited us to meet them at Anthony’s restaurant before our trip to MTH for a show tonight.

Anthony’s is a place they really like and we all felt like Italian food. They had made reservations for 5:30 on a Saturday night and the place was hopping.

We got there before happy hour ended at six and ordered a glass of wine each for five dollars, which was a good value. My wife and I ordered two meatballs for five dollars as well.

The bread that came out before any of the other food was kind of warm and that would set a tone for the evening. When the meatballs arrived, they had a tiny bit of heat to them, but were lukewarm and the sauce they were in was cold.

That was a little bit disappointing to be honest.

The atmosphere in this restaurant is magnificent! It’s right out of the 70s and just super cool.

I love ham and bean soup and that was the soup du jour. It was very hot and lovely. It was a little bit thinner than any of us expected, but the flavor was nice. Our delightful server brought me Tabasco for the soup. Curiously, it was not served with a soup spoon, but a very tiny teaspoon and it took me forever to eat the soup. But even with that, it was still hot at the end.

My wife got the house salad with Italian dressing, which she liked very much.

We shared the lasagna with meat sauce, and I didn’t taste a lot of meat in the sauce. Also, the lower part of the lasagna was hot, but the top half of it was not. Very curious. The flavor of the lasagna was marvelous and the sauce was a little sweet and quite good.

We were just so disappointed that several of the items at the table came from the kitchen cold.

This is a great restaurant, a lovely family place and clearly very popular but they have to do better at serving people hot food.

If everything had come out at a proper temperature, this would be a five star review. The food was...

This is a tough review for me. I want to like this place more but the only thing that made it worth the taxi ride was the service. Food is alright, pretty sure it's not homemade pasta. The atmosphere is a mix of Italian garage sale stuff and old dusty fixtures that should be replaced. I didn't know I would be stepping back in time to the 1970s. I've been to Italy and know what real Italian food is. I've had Italian relatives cook homemade pasta. This place is just okay. I enjoyed the company I was with, but no one was wowed by the food. And we all tried a lot of stuff. The best thing was the fried mozzarella, and you know they were not making those triangles to fry. Oh and if someone from the place reads my review, please change your music, I felt like I was in a convenience store. One minute it was oldies like Frank Sinatra, appropriate, then it was some R&B or rap. Not appropriate

NOTE: In response to the owner's response to my review, if you can't take an honest review, then don't read them. I never said I didn't like the music, I said it wasn't appropriate meaning it doesn't fit the atmosphere. But who cares about what customers think, you know what people like obviously, and don't need to cater to your customers. I'm glad you like 50 year old decorations because your grandparents put them there. Doesn't mean customers like it. But again, it's more important to make yourself feel good and not your customers. I guess that's why there were half a dozen or so empty tables for...