Andiamo Livonia — Restaurant in Livonia

This is not my favorite location..I have high expectations- in general i think since Andiamo expanded the quality has gone down. The last the 2 times (in 18 mo or so) it just seems the staff isnt as competent. I will say The zip sauce and kit kat bars usually make up for everything lacking.

Valentines day 2018 my sister was dining in- she had a kind, but terrible server. Very slow. . didnt bother to refil waters or sodas. He Didn't do food checks- he put her dressing on her salad when she asked on the side- by the time he came back he had her dinner.. Which was under cooked, they ordered 2 desserts & asked to run the cc for the bill at the same time he picked up the plates. He was asked to wrap her dinner, he brought the desserts & cc, never came back AT ALL. In meanwhile i asked her to order me 2 desserts to go- but her server never checked back in.. So no ordering my desserts, and she couldnt wrap the 2 halves of each dessert left on the table either. It was about 9:30pm when he was last at the table- So i ended up ordering the dessert online when i went on the site for the number, it was at 9:45- my thinking was she could pick up fm bar.. When she went to leave the hostess/waiter/bar staff, no one could find the order- i ended up calling directly to order it directly at about 9 55. The hostess said they were closed and couldnt make a dessert order. My sister was standing at the hostess stand. I tried explaining further- (Plus i sent a screen shot of my order conformation w/ pick up time,-9:55,pmt conf, etc). Finally at aboit 10:01 The manager got on the ph. I explained- she said it was a new system she wasnt sure what happened. 10:02 she asked me to hold, she went and got the dessert, i was going to have my sister pay cash or use my cc what ever was easier for her, she said she was sorry for the confusion and didnt charge me. And in case it already charged my cc- she told me to call her so she could take care of it as well.. which It didnt... The manager was very capable & professional. She took care of the simple thing i needed in 1 min- something the rest of her staff had a hard time grasping- or figuring out how to accomplish putting in an order for 2 desserts to go. Lol. I understand if the online system is new, but that could of been avoided if the initial server did a table check.

My sister didnt get into her experience at all w/ the manager- she was on a date & was already pissed off i was making it harder. Lol. . But She told me all about it as she ate half of my complementary dessert... compensating for the one she didnt get to bring hm.

I will add this location is wonderfully decorated. Lol. In the past i have had small family gatherings here.( 6-8 ppl ). Its easy to spend a good ammt of money. Its worth the cost if you have the right server taking care of you. To sum it up, Its the zip sauce, kit kat bars, & Service that seperates this place fm olive garden. Lol. I have a millie gratzie card somewhere. Does anyone know if they still honor...

First off let me say our server Breanna was very attentive and deserves at least 5 stars. We came for the Mother's Day Brunch buffet. At around 12 noon, it appeared to be quite disorganized. We had to make reservations, so I'm not sure why all the people were waiting, unless they overbooked people. Coming from a restaurant mgmt and food service background, the people doing the check-in, seemed to be having a hard time finding names on the list(?), and then the wait was still lengthy. What is the point of making a reservation for a designated time if you aren't going to be seated within 10 mins of arriving? There had to have been about 25 people between 11.30 and noon that were waiting in the entryway to be seated, and presumably had reservations for that time period. (Were reservations a REQUIREMENT? It was quite obvious that many people were annoyed in the lack of efficiency with the check-in/seating process. They really need to think through this whole entry/check-in process a bit better before doing another event like this. People were trying to walk through with their plates of food, into the mob of people waiting in the entryway. (??) Once we got seated, it took another 10-15 mins before anyone came to the table to get our drinks, etc. The buffet was okay, but I wasn't as impressed as last year(This is 2nd year doing Mother's Day brunch here). No eggs on the buffet, no smoked salmon, no French toast as they had last year. We chose this place because my mom loved their smoked salmon and French toast last year, and wanted to go again. The hot food was only warm, not hot. The salads and cheeses were very good. The berry Blintzes were wonderful, as were the bacon and shrimp. They offered a dessert bar too, but personally, I'd have liked to see less cake pops, and cake-like items. Last year they had individual cheese cake/pudding type desserts As mentioned before, our server was very attentive and very nice; Brianna. She came back often to ask if we wanted more drinks, etc. I would have liked to leave her more than the 18% gratuity that they added onto everyone's tab, but knowing that she wouldn't have gotten the additional money, for herself, I opted to leave it as they charged. Unfortunately, that is less than I would normally have left for a $200 meal, so in my instance that short-changed the server. But if they all share in the entire take-in from the gratuity, I suppose in some instances it may have made sense. They may have thought they would get less than 18% from many people, which could be true at the $50 per person they charged. Possibly a large family of 8-10 might not leave the average tip, after spending $400-500 on brunch. All in all, the overall experience was just average. I think we've decided to try someplace...

Regarding banquets and special events: We had our baby shower at Andiamo Livonia and it was a very mixed bag.

First, the banquet manager was 40 minutes late, didn’t answer any of the text or calls from the 6 people waiting at the time he himself specifically set with them.

Well, this couldn’t have started my day off worse as my 7 months pregnant wife was EXTREMELY panic’d that her mother and friends all tell her they can’t get in. I tried to calm her but being 7 months pregnant I think that’s explanation enough.

So I’m not even there yet and things are going wrong. About halfway to the venue we get confirmation banquette manager arrived and with plenty of excuses in tow.

He also seemed hungover and a bit in over his head.

I get in, look around and notice a giant silver bucket near the head table... the roof was leaking so we literally had a drip bucket next to our table.

We had to use a booth... we found dirty silverware in that booth from the night before. I put them in the drip bucket and no one noticed. Fun stuff.

No music so it was awkwardly quiet for a good portion of the time until crowd noise took over.

After about an hour after guests arrived I noticed there seemed to be significantly more staff and things started going much smoother. This was when things started going much smoother.

The food came out which was tasty. They fed us, the couple of the event, first which was a nice touch.

Things were nice from here on out.

Shoutout to Jazmyn and the other girls who were great.

I work in reality tv, mainly on Food Network shows (Chopped, Beat Bobby Flay) and I’ve worked with hundreds of chefs across the country. They all have one thing in common- their goal is to make guests feel taken care of, we certainly didn’t feel that way the majority of the event. Towards the end it was much better than the start.

Regarding banquet I give a generous three stars because ultimately the food was good and the servers were very nice and accommodating. Management just seemed very overwhelmed and made excuses (I don’t care you drove from Warren, Bro)

So take that for what it’s worth.

Edit- the owner responded as you see below, the email got bounced back when sent to the address provided so clearly this is the level of detail Andiamo pays...