Luna Rossa Winery & Pizzeria — Restaurant in Las Cruces

This was quite possibly my worst dining experience in Las Cruces--it was epically bad. My husband and I had been here once before but were not impressed with the food or the drinks, but came for a friend's birthday dinner. It was quite busy in a Monday night, which was understandable given their Monday special, but we were greeted by a very rude hostess who told us multiple times it would be a long wait before agreeing to even write our name down for a party of fifteen. One woman, a lady in a colorful apron, was actually quite accommodating and secured us a table for nine while we waited for another table to clear out, so we were seated within a reasonable time (at least those of us who could fit there, but the rest sat at the bar). Little did we know the wait and small table would be the least of our worries. After several minutes we were, and I use this term loosely, "greeted" by our server Damian, whom I can only hope was seriously stoned. The birthday girl and her husband clearly ordered a bottle of wine, and after he brought us waters several more minutes later they asked to check on it and he told them they had never ordered any wine from him. Eventually, after asking another server their wine came. Much later Damian took our order. Our empty water glasses went unnoticed until well after the food arrived. Two of the party ordered a pizza which came out much later than everyone else's food and was significantly smaller. Upon receipt of the bill they discovered their pizza was also twice as expensive than everyone else's despite its small size. When they followed up with the bartender (because our server was AWOL for such a long period), they were told smaller pizzas don't get a discount, which is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard, as it was literally less than half the size of the others. Just as our food arrived, nearly 40 minutes into our dining experience the table next to ours was able to pay their bill (they had their card out and were signaling for nearly fifteen minutes before being served) and the nice lady in the apron cleared it for the rest of our party to be seated. Damian never once smiled, said sorry for the wait, or provided any other semblance of hospitality. As a former server I make Many allowances for servers during a rush, especially with a large party like ours, but he did not even offer a sliver of saving grace for himself. The food, again, was okay but definitely not enough to redeem this horrible experience....

Sigh. This was our first visit there and it was disappointing, unfortunately. Enough so that I will take the time to write this out. The pizzas were standard but the service was slow and there are things they should work on.

It took 30 minutes to get a seat despite being told it would be 15 and an hour to get our food, during which I could see our pizzas sit for 15-20 minutes (!) while we waited for my salad (?). The pizzas were fine but the ingredients were oddly clumped on all three; you had to sit there and rearrange with your fork to spread the sausage, green chile, or other toppings out. The weirdest thing was the sauteed chicken breast salad. What came out was chunks of chicken like you'd have on a fajita, along with sauteed peppers, then some regular salad mix and some shredded carrots. Not worth being the highest priced item we ordered that night.

Finally, I really hope they fix their bathrooms. The men's bathroom had a cleaning log that was ignored and completely unfilled out, and the bathroom looked messy like that would imply, and the faucet hardware was loose. It felt like a hole in the wall type of bathroom, not a place you'd take a date.

The waitress acknowledged the wait but never asked about our food or otherwise checked on us. We did get $5 off the meal but that didn't seem like much considering it was two hours from when we arrived until...

We drove 13 hours today, and were looking forward to have a meal and try some good wine here!! We were so excited, when we finally got there. We stood around for a while and finally were greeted by the hostess, who informed us they stopped taking customers at 8pm. I checked my watch, it was 8:04 which I also shared with her. Additionally I explained that we’ve been waiting around for at least 5min. I politely asked for an exception. The hostess shrugged her shoulders. My husband said “we just drove for 13 hours and were hoping to get a meal”… She smiled and shrugged her shoulders again, and said they stopped taking customers at 8:00pm! We also had two pre-teen kids with us who were more than exhausted from the trip. We were so disappointed, and left!! Well we drove 0.6 miles to the winery down the street who were more than happy to seat us and allowed us to have meal!! I used this as a great 1st example for my kids!! When they don’t want our business, we take it elsewhere! We are out of state and just passing through, perhaps you don’t need to worry if we ever return! But if you’re in the hospitality/restaurant business, you should train your employees to not turn people with similar circumstances away!! (We spent $200 at the...