Mia Francesca — Restaurant in Lake View Township

Disappointing! We decided to dine at Mia Francesca last night to experience the new renovations and updated menu. I have been dining at Mia Francesca for 30 + years, atleast 30-40 visits, and will unfortunately not be returning. First and foremost, the new floors are dangerously slippery and represent a dangerous hazard - someone is going to slip & fall & get hurt! I was wearing relatively new dress shoes with a rubber soul and my date was wearing new dress shoes with a kitten heal and our shoes had no grip to the floor and we were slipping & sliding all over and almost slipped & fell on several occasions. The rennovations are mediocare at best. The fake large flower arrangements on the ledge by the front window are tacky, outdated, and look like an arrangement at a funeral home. When we were seated, there were no napkins on our table, no one brought us napkins, we had to ask for napkins. Warm freshly baked wonderfully smelling bread with olive oil & grated parmesean cheese is no longer given to customers - this was part of the memorable & enjoyable dining experience at Mia Fancesca and is surely missed. Our server told us it was taken off the menu because customers were wasting bread. Come on Scott Harris Hospitality, it's just bread and it was part of the history & dining experience at Mia Francesca - bring this back and stop cheaping out on your customers. The caesar salad was room temperature, not cold, a mound of piled uncut full romaine lettuce leaves, not a nice presentation, difficult to share, not enjoyable - the lettuce needs to be cold & chopped. The beef carpaccio was not cold like it was in the past and was only slightly below room temperature. The service needs significant improvement. Our server disappeared for extended periods of time, never came to our table to check on our food, never asked if everything was ok or whether we needed anything else, never asked if we wanted dessert, never came back to our table to ask if we wanted a refill of coffee. We sat for 15 - 20 minutes waiting for a refill of coffee, gave up, asked for our bill, paid it and left. The gnocchi cheese filled pillow with hen in the woods mushrooms was decent. The meat lasagna was a decent size portion and a little above average in taste but the amount of meat in the lasagna was minimal. The 3% service charge automatically added to your bill, which can be removed upon request, is antiquated (covid has been over for years) and offensive. Many people likely don't catch this 3% charge and pay it. Finally, bringing the bill to the table in a folded over 1/4 sheet piece of paper promoting Scott Harris Hospitality instead of a full size server book is tacky & is not a safe & secure method to safely secure your cash or credit card payment - cash is obviously exposed in open view & if left on the table when you pay & leave is subject to easy theft. Overall, a very disappointing...

Mia Francesca is a small Italian restaurant with alot of character. The feel of the restaurant lends itself to a true Italian Trattoria.

The band was setting up while we were eating at a white linen cloth table. The menu offered a variety of Italian favorites, and this evening there were several additional evening specials.

We started with a meatball appetizer, which was two medium sized all beef meatballs. Tasty, but hard to share with the table.

For our main courses we enjoyed the Lobster Ravioli in a cream sauce (the special). The Raviloi con Carciofie Asparagi which is handmade Ravioli with asparagus, artichoke and mascarpone cheese in a basil creme sauce. The Rigatoni con Pollo E Asparagi which is grilled chicken, asparagus and pine nuts in a light basil creme sauce.

We also ordered the special dessert of a vanilla creme custard with whipped cream.

The meals were savory and went well with the wine selection. Mia Francesca would be a nice place to come and enjoy a culinary experience with some music.

The service, however was much to be desired. A restaurant of this caliber should have a staff knowledgeable on the menu. Our waitress did not know the dishes nor could she describe the menu items when we asked questions. Her response was always "that's my favorite" without saying why.

The girl behind the reservation table did not have a table set for five, which was our reservation made three days in advance. So we had to wait while a table was set up for us.

No one explained the specials or any menu items Mia Francesca is known for. In fact, she could not say if the pasta was homemade on site.

That was poor. Mia Francesca gets three stars, for this reason. A nice restaurant should have professional servers who are knowledgeable about the restaurant, the menu, and how dishes are prepared. The server should be attentive and offer...

I'm always very skeptical of a large number of 5 star reviews by people with very little review history so here's my take. A group of three of us had reservations for Saturday night. Now we did get there 5 min late. They had us wait by the bar in a very packed space where we were clearly in the way of everyone. When we were then directed to stand by the host stand where again there was no room and we were clearly in the way of everyone. So 15 to 20 minutes of shuffling in the main dining room where the sound level was one of the highest I've experienced where you have to yell to be heard.

Now they tell us they have a table for us. We were led upstairs to the secondary dining area which was awesome cause it was 1000x quieter and more chill so we could hear each other (but surprised to see so many empty tables when we were standing shoulder to shoulder and in everyone's way for a good 20 minutes).

The story continues upstairs where we sat with our menus for 25 minutes before anyone thought they should ask if we wanted a drink). With 3 guests staring at the team who were folding napkins, a manager comes over and asks if we needed anything. Sprinkle in a few more misses of not having silverware, not getting the wine order correct, and a few other small things the first 40 minutes did not leave a great first impression. I will say once the server Kevin took over, he was wonderful and took good care of us. The food was tasty.

But wow, those first 40 minutes were rough and packing that main dining room does you no favors for the dining experience. I get it you may have been short staffed, but then don't take walk ins if you can't support your customers with reservations. I rarely leave bad reviews but this pre dining experience was so off putting I wanted to let you know so you can make sure it doesn't happen to...