Bravo! Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Knoxville

I have dined at Bravo Italian Kitchen twice before, and always found the food and service pretty good.

However, a word of caution for diners that want to eat there on Christmas day. DO. NOT. GO! I am not placing blame on the servers or staff that was there on a major holiday, but on the management that way overbooked the client to server ratio. They had put very little and poor forethought into service Christmas day so that customer service or the food would be lacking as badly as it was.

Arrived on time for our 4:00 pm reservation. (4:00 pm by no means was "rush hour" and we booked early to avoid the crowds) We waited 30 minutes and no one came to our table. No water, no waiter, nothing. Finally went up to the hostess stand and asked where our waiter was. 15 minutes later, someone from management served us bread and water and apologized. Apparently, they sat us at a table with no waiter assigned to us, and 5 of their waitstaff did not show up.

Waited another 20 minutes for someone to show up to take our order. Gave us more bread and water to appease us. Three out of 4 drinks arrived because they didn't have the ingredients to make one of them.

After an hour and 15 minutes, the waiter took our food order. At the same time he was taking our order, we noticed that the chef was actually serving trays of food instead of cooking, and the hostess was taking food orders, they were that short staffed. My heart just sank and the utter chaos that this place was becoming and how stressed the staff must have been. I'm sure they would have rather been home with their families on Christmas day rather than being there.

One of the dishes we ordered was the chicken marsala, waiter told us no mashed potatoes, they were sold out. Do you want French fries with that instead? What? Chicken was so dry and cold, the whole dish went uneaten and had it taken off of our bill. My salmon salad was wilted and the salmon was stiff and cold because you could tell it had been sitting in the bowl for quite some time. Chicken parmesan, same thing. Cold and un appetizing.

Second round of drinks came, no margarita for the hubs, bartender clocked out at 5:00 and no one is available to make drinks. Waiters can pour glasses of wine or serve beer. Do you want that instead? Sorry, hubs said he'll take a pass, thanks.

Lastly, I've never, ever left a zero tip at a restaurant in my life, but I could not find one single reason why I should leave one. The food and service was bad. Really, really bad. You tip for good food and service and both were a complete bust.

Lesson learned, next year I'm staying home and cooking Christmas dinner. We will not be back, nor will we recommend this...

It's our first time coming to this location, and we will never come back again. The service and the food were horrible. We went at 3 pm, so we weren't sure why. After we sat down, it took so long for our waitress to finally come and see us. That's after the manager had noticed us sitting there for a while, and I think she spoke to the waitress to come by. There's only a few people in the restaurants since it was in between rush hour lunch and dinner. Again, I'm not sure why it took so long for Cee Cee to get to us. We excuse the tardiness letting it slide. We ordered the food and when we got our salads it looked unappetizing. It's just a bunch of chopped lettuce slathered with some dressing. Then, when our food actually came, it tasted as if it was a microwave dish or pasta sauce from a jar. The atmosphere and decor are great, but the food and the service do not match. I could have cooked this at home for much less with the same store-bought ingredients and still have it taste better than what was served. My husband only ate half of his meal. And that was just him for seeing it down because he My husband only ate half of his meal Pasta Bravo. And that was just him forcing it down. I ate a third of my fettuccine alfredo. Both are simple meals that were not complicated to make, and at any other restaurant, they taste delicious. I do not understand how Bravo got the simple dishes so wrong. When the food was delivered to the table, the waitress noticed my husband's drink was half gone she said that she would go get some more. We were done with our meals by the time she came around to the table, still did not have a drink to replenish ours, did not come and check to see if we thought our meal was good or if we needed anything else. The only reason why she came to the table is because I had to ask another waitress who was not even ours to go find our waitress. After the manager was seen at the beginning of our experience, I never saw the manager in the dining area again. At this point, we didn't want to talk to anybody else about our horrible experience. We just wanted to get out of there and go home and eat some real food. Fool us once okay but never again, we'll go back here, nor will we recommend it to anybody.

The one we went to out of state was much better and our only reason for...

This restaurant will never get my business again nor my families business. I tried this restaurant during thanksgiving figuring it would be a nice change of scenery for the family. Well, the food came out that day and our sons pizza was burnt the parm chicken I ordered barely had pasta on it and our waiter was M I A half the time.

The only good not of that meal was the spaghetti and meatballs my in laws and wife ordered. Said to myself welp it’s a holiday and that’s probably why.

Fast forward to today when I placed an order and so did my wife. Drove from work to restaurant about an hour after ordering online. Got to restaurant Peking lot. Called and no one picked up. Called again someone answered and we told them we were here for our orders. A few minutes later someone comes out and says who are you here for, we tell that gentlemen our names and we’re here to pickup our orders.

Same gentlemen comes out and says here’s your order hands it to us through the window and we begin to inspect our order. We realize a few things are missing, our sons pizza looks like something you get from a frozen pizza box thin and very crispy. So I go in and tell them we’re missing items from our order.

Items were spaghetti and meatballs and a buddies chocolate cake. I am then handed our spaghetti and meatballs but the cake is a buddies confetti cake. Then I am told sorry we dont have the cake you ordered this is what we have in place of that.

I placed an order at what is considered an expensive restaurant, I know this because of my bill. I expect to be contacted if anything is missing or delayed not surprised when I arrive to pick up my order and on top of which I had to walk in to tell someone things are missing.

It’s just aggravating and unprofessional of an establishment of this caliber to miss the mark twice. Now the manager did send me home with the cake as a replacement and also gave me there chocolate cake as a bonus.

We work hard to enjoy ourselves at these restaurants and when they do not do simple follow through it’s aggravating and insulting. Pizza is a paper weight, there’s again barely any pasta in our chicken parm meals. So we are good thanks for high priced lesson Bravo Italiano we will be going...