Osteria Pollani — Restaurant in Largo

My husband has been wanting to try this place out for a while, but he travels often. We finally had the opportunity the other day. Sadly, we were not impressed with the food, nor the service. Started by our server bringing a bread basket. There were 3 small pieces of bread with the tiniest amount of dipping oil. Not enough oil for the 3 pieces. It gave us a good chuckle though because I always tell my husband to go easy on the bread anyway. We ordered the fried calamari as an appetizer. The seasoning was ok but the calamari was very over cooked. Served with only a small amount of sauce for dipping. (Think shot glass size) We let our server know that it was over cooked and she simply said “I’ll let the kitchen know”. We requested additional sauce and she brought us another shot glass sized amount. For our entrees, I ordered the Branzino - which is the sea bass. I’m accustomed to sea bass being a meaty, flaky white fish. The presentation was fairly nice but what I received was a fileted open fish with the tail and skin and very little fish meat. The fish meat was so thin, I questioned if it was really sea bass. It did taste like it, as I was scrapping little bits of fish off the skin to get a fork full. The edges were dry and overdone. Seasoning was a little bland. The broccolini was soggy. My husband ordered the Frutti Di Mare with the tomato sauce. The sauce was very tasty but once again, the seafood was extremely over cooked. Such a disappointment. Since I only ate a small bite of my piece of bread, I handed it over and he at least enjoyed soaking up the sauce with it. He had seen on the menu they charge for additional bread, so at this point he was not willing to add an additional cost just to enjoy what he could of his entree. I was over this whole experience but he decided that we should still try a dessert. He has a sweet tooth and thought we might be pleasantly surprised. We ordered the Nutella roll. It came out hot, freshly baked, with a beautiful presentation. Ok, maybe they will redeem themselves with dessert. Unfortunately not. The taste did not match the beauty at all. The dough had a strange taste, almost as if it was freezer burnt or something along that line. To say this experience was a huge disappointment is an understatement. Messing up on one plate can be understood and accepted, but messing up on all three courses was just too much. When we received our check and we noticed we were charged an additional $1.50 for that shot glass of sauce that we ordered, to make our appetizer more palatable! I worked in an upscale Italian restaurant in Connecticut, before moving to Florida. I can tell you, if a customer expressed any kind of dissatisfaction, either management, someone from the kitchen, or the owner themselves would go to the table and acknowledge their dissatisfaction and try to make it right in some way. The least our server could have done to acknowledge our dissatisfaction is comped the cost of the additional sauce. If the server does not have the authority to make that call, she should have spoke to management. The vibe we got was she really didn’t care. My suggestion is if you’re going to nickel and dime your customers for every little thing, then you should be serving quality food, cooked properly, and your staff should be proud to be serving it. Especially at these prices. This is not an inexpensive establishment. We don’t mind paying good money for small portions, if the quality is outstanding, or close to outstanding. This was just a total disappointment. We always try to support our local, family establishments and normally we would give one another try despite a bad first experience, but we will not be doing that here. The experience left us with a bad taste in our mouth, literally and figuratively. We so not recommend eating here. Hopefully they will use this review as a learning experience to correct some of their issues. Our town is a little gem and we love the variety of restaurants here. Just not this one. We wish them the...

I rarely review a restaurant because I can always go somewhere else, but I had to this time. We showed up for a 6pm reservation on our 51st Anniversary. We were meeting two other people there for their birthday. We went there specifically to get a couple of veal dishes that were on their website menu. As we walked in the door the waitress was just telling a table of 13 that they were out of veal. That was my first clue that things were not going to go well. We decided to stay because we had invited our friends to buy them dinner at what we thought was a great restaurant and we could eat something different anyway. We were seated by the only waitress in the place who turned out to be the only good thing we experienced. We decided on lasagna as we figured it is a common Italian dish and should be very good at this supposedly excellent restaurant. When the bread arrived it was burnt on the bottom and the olive oil dip was the worst I have ever tasted, if in fact it was real olive oil. I could have sent it back but I figured we were not going to eat much bread anyway and the waitress was running around doing her best to serve everyone in the place. We didn’t have to wait an inordinate amount of time (we weren’t in a rush anyway) for the entree to arrive. It looked appetizing so we dug in. I don’t want to say things like “it was terrible” etc but it was definitely very disappointing and not what anyone who has ever eaten lasagne would call anywhere near authentic Italian. It was mainly noodles with some sauce and a little meat of some kind. There was absolutely no ricotta cheese (which I feel really makes lasagna taste great) and the sauce was bland. I have had much better Italian food at The Olive Garden (which for some reason gets a bad rap in my estimation). So there it is my review of Da Pollani's. As you can tell by my anniversary number I am no stranger to dining out and I cannot fathom how this restaurant gets good reviews. I’m always impressed when the owner responds to bad reviews as this one apparently does but there is no way he can justify our “experience”. Once again, the waitress was great and got a decent tip but everything else was overpriced and inferior. I have no ax to grind here and my friend who is a cancer survivor and only eats soft desserts said the Tiramiso was good. Sorry Mr or Ms owner I really hate to send a review like this but I think you would like to know how your...

This is our 3rd time at Osteria Pollani and it will be our last. The 1st time was great, good food good service by a family member. 2nd time was o.k.. Today arrived a 2:05 stood outside by the menu kiosk and poked my head in the front door. Waitress walked by twice without a comment. 2:10 sat down at an outside table and 2 minutes later a waitress came by. Wife ordered a sangria, I a Stella. 10 minutes later we had our drinks and I placed an order to today's special, wife ordered Sicilian Bang Shrimp and asked if it could be with pasta instead of bedded with romaine lettuce with the sauce on the side. Waitress said no problem and would we like some bread. We said yes that sounds good. After 20 minutes with no food, no bread wife walked inside and the place was empty except for bartender. 10 minutes after that (30 minutes total wait time) our food arrived , warm not hot. The birds nest of pasta on our plates somewhat dry and when the waitress came back in another 5 minutes with the bread she ask if everything was o.k. My wife said no her food was not very good and the waitress offered to take it back. I got another beer and my wife got a soda. We declined the offer and ate. When the bill came it was $90.38 for 1 happy hour sangria, 2 beers, 1 soda, one lunch special and one shrimp. Lets say the drinks were $10 each thats $40 leaving the costs for the two happy hour meals over the cost of there regular meal price and the food was not very good. Food aside I asked the waitress why she did not bring the bread for us to munch on while we waited for the meals. "I always bring the bread with (actually after) the meals" tell me is that the restaurant's policy, do they tell you to do that?" "No it just what I do" "Well tell me do you think that is good customer service, do you think the owners would like that?" No response. I get it good help is hard to find but the place was almost completely empty and it wasn't about the cost, we regularly go out for fine dining experiences. But after our 1st visit we thought this place was a hidden gem at a bargain price, well I guess we...