Gino's Ristorante — Restaurant in Lancaster

Absolute garbage! I come from Montreal on the east coast and know great pizza, went to New York and had the b.e.s.t. pizza, and here in this sad little town that know nothing of culinary gastronomy, this is rated 4.3 stars...? Either people are not aware of what's out there out of Lancaster or the real chef was sick, but this was 50$ down the train. The pizza felt like a "Digiorno frozen pizza", so not bad for a frozen pizza but really from a restaurant that people claim is the "best pizza ever" this is sad.

My wife ordered spaghetti Bolognese and linguini alfredo with garlic bread of which I also sampled out of morbid curiosity. The "meat" sauce was meat-less and runny like I've never seen. Her spaghetti was floating in what seemed like a pool of tomato juice. It was bland, no spices in it and just plain disgusting to look at. The linguini Alfredo was tasteless and boring. Sadly enough, my wife admitted that I did better with store bought Alfredo sauce that I pimped a bit with fresh parmesan.

The garlic bread had ZERO garlic on it and was hard and without flavor. Again you get better out of frozen bread at your grocery store. It's NOT HARD TO MAKE GARLIC BREAD! Here's the recipie to help this sad excuse of a restaurant, chef take notes:

-slices of bread -in a bowl, soft butter and a few crushed garlic cloves that you mix together -basil or oregano for taste and looks on top -butter up and cook

How DUMB can you be to get this wrong?

Service was friendly, accommodating but slow. Ambiance is old, a bit cafeteria-esque but at least they have a really cool LED illuminated tree in the entrance.

In the end, we were supposed to go to a 7:15 movie afterward but decided to rush to catch the 6:30 presentation since there was no point staying there. They offered boxes to put the 4 bites my wife had of her pastas and boxed my small pizza that I only had 3 miserable slices of, we left the boxes there. They can feed it to pigeons maybe. Hopefully they got the hint.

The lemon candy was good... 50$ for one piece of candy? I'm still angry....

We are not young - but we were WAY below the age demographic here. This was like the early bird dinner group decided to risk it and stay out until 7! So, if you're looking for a hip crowd, look somewhere else. If you're looking for a crowd, maybe look somewhere else. It's Friday night, we've got a group (5) so I called to make reservations and the hostess just said "you'll be fine". Ok. We sure were. The place is HUGE which is great if you're ever having an event but it was empty.

In the entire place is our group, 2 more tables and 3 people at the bar. 16 total guests (I counted because it was easy to do!). With so few people I would expect service to be stellar. Instead it was very, very slow and each time we asked the waitress for anything, she was bothered. Once she finally brought the food she disappeared. I actually had to get up and go look for her to refill drinks.

The food was not bad. Would not order pizza again. It was unremarkable and very sauce heavy for our liking. The pasta portions were large. Almost enough to split - but it's JUST pasta. No appetizers, no soup, no salad. So if you split you'll need to order a little something more. The lasagna left much to be desired. Bland and again, lots of red sauce. The layers were very striated like it hadn't had time to sit and come together. The carbonara was ok, but the sauce was thick, nearly an alfredo. The spicy tiger shrimp sauce was spicier than anticipated, but the few frozen shrimp were left on the plate.

For us, we probably won't be back. We love Italian food and this was not a great example of what great Italian food is. Based on the decor and the clientele, I think they were great Italian food in the '80s or '90s and haven't changed a...

So first off let me say this star of 1reflexes on Alex and his incompetent attitude towards us. We arrive for dinner was told someone would be right with us we waited 10mins or more to be seated finally ok yes than Alex arrives drinks order food order we're finally good to go we wait and wait and wait finally our drinks small glass of wine some water and our garlic bread and salad arrives ok yes. Nope the garlic bread was one step away from being a hard dry crouton we ask for more water as at this point it's like choking down a Popeyes biscuit y'all know what I meen we waited almost 20mins for water to come even holding up our glass to him he just simply ignored us arggg our food arrives than finally a pitcher of water let's dig in finally. Nope my spaghetti was hard and tasted of starch almost cardboard if u will I send it back overlook the menu Alex comes back what will u have. I ask are all the pasta products cooked the same he than looks at me with deer in the headlights eyes and goes uhhhhhhh oh idk. I said is there something you'd recommend he says again deer in the headlights ahhh idk. I say just give me the check were leaving. Bill arrives fastest thing to the table we than ask one of the other workers if there is a manager we could speak with she say yes it was your server Alex he the floor manager we explained to her what happened she was gonna comp is we told her we allredy paid and it wasn't about that. She apologized Alex did not. So to the owners of Gino's I urge you your employee Alex/ manager needs a lesson in hospitality cuz honestly as many times as we've been there we will not be going back if that's the service we get

Ps ....