Fazoli's — Restaurant in Kingsport

It used to be that Fazoli’s won our business just because of the value. Yeah, the amount of food that my girlfriend and I get for $20 there would have been $60 at Applebee’s.

But this isn’t 2009.

With the rapid explosion of food establishments that cater more to the “new Kingsport” class of millennials with money and less to our baby boomer parents, Fazoli’s no longer stands out. It isn’t entirely their fault, because much of the problem seems to be that the employees are too busy being stretched between a busy indoor service and a drive thru. For example, I watched one particular car arrive in the drive thru when we arrived to dine in, which was still in line when we were walking out - AFTER ALREADY EATING.

No, the problem is two fold. The food doesn’t support the pricing. The pasta is fine, but that’s it. The sauces and flavorings aren’t as good as even a can of Prego straight off the shelf at Food City. The whole menu essentially tastes the same, and you can begin to tell exactly what it is: extremely mass produced food that may not be all that fresh. My spaghetti was dry.

10 years ago, the value still wins. Today, you have fast food restaurants that offer higher quality food with better service on the “cheaper” end of the spectrum, and higher quality restaurants where you get MUCH nicer service and attention to detail for only a few bucks more.

Most of the employees at Fazoli’s obviously don’t want to be there, standing around on their phones and ignoring customers. In particular, the lady working the register at around 6 pm today had no interest in helping us with our order. If you want to charge the amount you do for this food, you have to offer better service than Pals.

Don’t get me wrong, it can still be saved, but I feel like Fazoli’s is going the way of Long John Silvers and only catering to older people who don’t demand...

Myself and my family came here to eat tonight. The first time we have been here in 8 years. Wanted something different. We placed our order, got our drinks and sat down. Our food arrived and my grandson had gotten the baked lasagna. About 3 bites into his meal I seen him struggling trying to chew then all of a sudden he pulled a big piece of plastic out of his mouth. There was a girl walking around the dining room wearing a head set. I stopped her as she came by our table and showed her what was in my grandson's lasagna. He had laid it on the tray our food had been carried out on. She snarled her nose, took the tray from our table and said I will tell them. No apology from anyone. No nothing. As we were leaving I told the front counter person what had happened. All I got was I think she told them. I was furious. Someone could've atleast apologized and offered to replace his food or something but nobody cared. Mind you this is a child who it happened to. Customer service here is terrible and I wouldn't suggest anyone eating here. We left and went to a different restaurant so our family could have dinner with no worries and in a family...

The employees are kind, helpful, and patient. The food is Italian fare with somewhat limited variety: they have a few types of pasta, a few types of sauce, a few sandwiches, etc. It all tastes simple but good. They're bread sticks are soft, warm, and flavored with ample garlic salt and butter. They only thing I was somewhat disappointed in was their salad. It was just iceberg lettuce, processed cheese and three grape tomatoes. If that's your jam, well nothing is wrong with it. But, I felt like it would have benefited from one or two other things (maybe pepporcinis or croutons?). They do have bigger dinner salads, but their more caloric than most of the pasta dishes. They did away with one less-caloric dinner salad I used to like. I guess, over all, this restaurant has a lot of potential and does many things well. It just isn't serving the type of food I normally go for. If comfort Italian food is your type of food, I'd...