Floridino's Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Lake Hamilton

From beginning to end the whole experience was terrible. When we arrived we were told that our party of 13 (which we had made a reservation a week earlier) would be divided into 3 separate tables which no one told us prior. Since we were celebrating my mother in laws birthday it wasn’t ideal since we would’ve liked to all eat together (again would’ve been nice to have known prior to arriving there). We waited for 20 minutes past our reservation time for the 3 tables.

Once we were all seated at our tables it took the 1st waitress another 15 minutes before bringing our drinks. When she finally came back to take our order she proceeded to roll her eyes and told us she was going to swap out with another waitress and that waitress would take our order. The only thing we had asked her before she said that was to split the check or if she couldn’t that we would at least have separate checks with our separate orders which is something common that any restaurant normally can do (we ended up just putting the whole order under one check since apparently it’s too difficult/hard to have separate checks).

The 2nd waitress arrived after another 20 minutes of not ordering food (in grand total we’ve now been waiting an 1hr with no food). She took our order with a lot of attitude even though we were being polite and pretty straight forward. Our food arrives the staff bringing it out all looked super annoyed to be there. Food was ok 3.5 out of 5 although the calzones were huge which was awesome (we ordered 3 pizzas, 2 calzones, pizza muffins and 2 pastas).

Waitress never checked in with us while we ate and when she finally came to our table she was already carrying boxes. When asked about cannolis she said they had been out for hours (which sounds a little suspicious given it’s a large restaurant that sees a lot of people daily and our dinner reservation was at 5:30pm 🤷🏻‍♀️)

To summarize this was supposed to be a fun dinner for my mother in law with all her kids and grandkids and it turned out to be a terrible time due to the extremely rude staff here! It’s not every day we go out as a family (due to there being so many of us and how expensive it can get) and this experience hasn’t really made us want to go out anytime soon again which is disappointing. All of this could’ve been solved if the staff wouldn’t have been extremely rude and unpleasant from the very beginning when all we wanted was to grab some food and enjoy time with the family and celebrate a birthday at a restaurant that my late father in law loved to go to (the winter...

ADAM!!!!!! YOU ARE AN AMAZING HUMAN! Okay, now that we have gotten that out, I want to walk through (in a nutshell) from the moments prior to flipping a U'Y. So yes, my husband and I neglected to feed ourselves breakfast and hurried out the door! After stopping at 3/4 of our meetings, errands, and more meetings, we decided it was important to eat. (This was approximately 3 o'clock. Famished, we passed multiple fast-food stomachache places, and nothing looked appetizing. So many places and none sounded like we would be happy about our decision (if you know what I mean). That is when, in the middle of nowhere and somewhere, there was this green 💚 shining building (no kidding it was like Jesus shone the light of the heavens down on it!

In a moments decision, we had already passed it, something drew us there so, my husband committed a U-Turn and there is this massive parking lot. Parking in front of this huge lake... and walked in the front door, but as soon as we walked in, the door wasn't even closed, and someone whizzed by with a very pleasant attitude. I turned to my husband and said I already have a good feeling about this place." If everyone in here had her personality, then this place is for us.

No sooner did I get that out of my mouth, a blonde lady happily sent us to a table, but knowing my husband and myself, we NEEDED A BOOTH. Which she generously and pleasantly obliged.

We were already impressed and then came our amazing waiter. His name is Adam... and when I say he was amazing, he was amazing... he was cheerful, helpful, courteous, kind, and efficient. The cups never got empty, AND we never sat waiting for anything . Adam seemed like he honestly loves his role at his job and is so... so very good at it!

We honestly had NO regrets. Our ticket was affordable, and we vowed to always come back when we were hungry for pasta, pizza, wings, atmosphere, or just a pleasant sit down with coffee and dessert. It was awesome, too!

All in all, I wish we could give more stars because it was THE place, everyone!!! Just go ahead and make that U-Turn, people. I assure you, you will not regret it.

By the way, we live over 35 minutes away and will be repeating this trip, hands down!

See ya'll soon, we will be back!!! Thank you for being that place!!! ❤️

Footnote: we never got a stomachache! (Thanks be to the one true king and everyone who...

It was ok, they were under staffed and packed on a Thursday night but it was still only a 30 minute wait which in my opinion really isn't too bad considering, and the food was brought iut fairly quickly.

The food was fine, it was typical wings, chicken fingers etc. I was pleased to find they had Tres Leche but it was just ok, it didn't have me really wanting more so I'm not sure if they make it in house or not.

Waitress was friendly but the two young girls in the front seemed uninviting. I asked to order a cup of coffee on my way out and she looked at me like I had 3 heads, backed away and turned around and whispered to the other girl and said nothing at all to me and I felt ignored. It was extremely awkward but then another server came a while later and he asked me if I asked for a coffee, I said yes please and he told me the girls were just trying to figure out if there was enough milk for another cup. That's fine but I still felt they could have said something instead of turned and whispered to eachother and ignored me lol but that was basically my only complaint, the cappuccino was good at least, so.... worth it?

I came because I heard the food was supposed to be great from some locals but it just seemed like pretty standard stuff which is honestly my own fault for ordering what I did. I got the gluten free pizza which I didn't order but they mistakenly brought to me, I was fine with it and honestly happy they did because honestly it was one of the most enjoyable GF pizzas I've ever had. I plan to go back and try their actual dishes instead of the diner-like foods (we got chicken fingers, wings, Mozzarella sticks and the GF pizza) I really wish I gave the food they actually prepare themselves in-house a shot (like the Eggplant Parmesan) but again I plan to come back and hopefully I'll remember to update this. It was about $100 for 5 people so with that said I think the food was pretty fairly priced! The rainbow cake was good considering it was just a regular white cake with buttercream we didn't expect to be wowed but the icing was definitely on point. My kids loved it! They also have a great lake view as well as outdoor dining inside of a lanai that overlooks said lake as the sun sets which can definitely make for a nice date night....