Biaggi's Ristorante Italiano — Restaurant in Loveland

As a long-time customer, we were incredibly disappointed in the service we received last night. I was bragging to visiting family that my husband and I will take them to Biaggi’s for their incredible food. Just let me say this isn’t about discrediting a server who may be learning or new because of how she did her job, people can improve with experience. We are patient, especially with new servers, and always generously tip but last night was a hard pass no. We had a reservation at 5 pm the best time to get the freshest food. We ordered our drinks and then an appetizer. In normal circumstances the waitress would go in a place the order with the kitchen. A substantial amount of time passed without getting the appetizer, about 15 minutes and the restaurant was still not too busy. The server came back to take our order where we ordered salads and soup, and then our entree. After a substantial amount of time, another 15 to 20 minutes, our table gets loaded up with our appetizers and the pre entree salads and soups. The plates are so big there is barely room to fit anything on the table. We are all looking at this food placement as it must be a mistake. The staff who delivers the food is not the waitress, so I mention to please make sure not to bring our entrees for a while as we just got this dump of food. When the server comes back, my husband said the same to her and that dropping all of the appetizer and salad plates was too much, it barely fits on the table, and to make sure she times out our entrees. This is where the waitress loses any sympathy. She got argumentative and said “this is how I do it” and then proceeded to roll her eyes and treat us with disrespect because she was clearly bothered that we were disappointed. Mind you we have had dozens of servers at Biaggi’s who have never dropped appetizers and pre entree food at the same time. We believe that the server forgot to put in the appetizer order, and when she put in the entree and salad order she dropped them with the kitchen all at once. The way she reacted we further believe that they were just minutes away from bringing our entrees out, which would have not fit on the table at all. Instead of handling it and telling us what really happened, she got defensive and made it out to be our fault. For the rest or dinner she provided very slow service, conveniently forgot to fill refills and when she would come by our table as she would walk away, I would see her roll her eyes. The manager came to our table prior to our entree coming out, and told my husband he slowed down our order, which means someone said something in the back. We believe the kitchen had to re-do our entree order because what the waitress put in was probably sitting in the window because it came about 25 minutes later hot and fresh. The final cherry on top, the portions are big so I couldn’t eat all of mine and the shrimp oreganata is my favorite Biaggi’s, so as she comes back to the table and asks for anything else, we order deserts to go and I ask for a to go box. She takes my plate and says she will put it in the box for me, and never returns. I had more than half of my dinner left. My review for the waitress is a 1-star, poor attitude, service and complete disrespect. Had you made these food delivery mistakes and treated us with respect and admitted that you forgot to put in your appetizer order, we would have gladly chalked it up to learning, but instead, the rolling of the eyes, getting argumentative and loud and talking bad about customers when you were the one who made the mistakes, you’re lucky I even gave you a 16% tip because you didn’t deserve it. You deserved to be taught a lesson in life on respect, but to let it go, we still tipped even more than the standard. I wasn’t even going to type this review until we got home and I realized you never brought back my to-go box. So Biaggi’s, the Chef gets 5 for excellent food, the server gets a 1 for her attitude and we will consider if we ever brag about you from out of state...

My wife and I came in recently to celebrate a very special occasion. We wanted a special dining experience. We were considering some of the most expensive restaurants in the region, and we settled on Biaggi’s. We have eaten here frequently in the past, but have not dined inside here in a couple years. We have only ordered their Pronto Packs to go during that time. Unfortunately, our visit was very disappointing.

To start with, the service was very slow. It took 10 minutes before we got water and menus. We ordered The Sangria Speciale. After 5 minutes, the waitress told us they were out of that Sangria mix, but she would see what the bartender could do. We could see the bar from our table, and we watched the bartender grab a jug of fruit mix and pour our Sangrias. The waitress soon returned making a big deal about the bartender going out of the way to make our Sangrias. I have no idea what the point of all that was. We ordered stuffed mushrooms, and a few minutes later our entrees. The mushrooms were very good – the highlight of the evening.

We had been at our table well over an hour, when our entrees finally arrived. The food was underwhelming at best. My wife ordered the Rigatoni Bolognese. I have never seen chunks of tomatoes, and chunks of carrots in a Bolognese. Make no mistake, carrots belong in a Bolognese, but when properly prepared, they basically become part of the sauce. The vegetables – traditionally carrots, celery and onions – in a Bolognese sauce, should be finely diced. Some Italian chefs will even blend them. They are then sautéed long enough to soften before cooking with the meat and tomatoes for several hours. When properly completed, they breakdown and add natural sugars and flavor, and also naturally thicken the sauce. Authentic Bolognese also uses tomato passata or puree, and will not have chunks of tomato. Another core ingredient is pancetta. This provides flavor and texture that are critical to an authentic sauce. Of course there is other ground meat, typically beef and pork, but the pancetta is a defining ingredient. Their sauce lacked pancetta. I do not think there was any, or it was so minimal, it could not be identified. It is one thing to make your own version of a sauce, but to call this a Bolognese was simply inaccurate. This sauce was like a quickly prepared marinara sauce with meat and chopped carrots. And to be honest, it simply did not taste very good.

I ordered the chicken and sausage Vesuvio. This entrée has chicken breast, link Italian sausage, roasted red peppers, and “crispy” potatoes in a “roasted garlic pan sauce”. Well, that is the menu description. The entrée was nothing like described. I have never tasted anything so bland at a restaurant. The “marinated” chicken tasted more like it was poached. It was completely flavorless. Even the sausage lacked flavor – something I have never experienced before with Italian Sausage. There were peas in the entrée, and they were indiscernible from canned peas you would buy in a grocery store. Even worse, the sauce tasted like they had just poured the water out of the canned peas and called it sauce. That is exactly what it tasted like – and the canned peas must have been unsalted. There was not a hint of garlic. Nothing was roasted. The crispy potatoes might have been crispy at one point, but after soaking in the water, they were mushy and unappealing. I did something I do not ever remember doing in an Italian restaurant – I salted my food. I had to. It was inconceivably flavorless. I literally contemplated asking for garlic salt just to make the food palatable. Instead, I simply asked for the check.

This was an occasion we wanted to celebrate with great food. Instead, all I could think of was the other restaurants we had passed on for slow service and really poor food. The experience really soured what was supposed to be a...

I wish I could give them a higher rating (because the butternut squash ravioli is fantastic), but a few things about my visit yesterday were pretty bad and need to be addressed.

My wife and I ordered a meal for a 6:00 pm pickup. We realized that was a busy time on a holiday, so we ordered several hours ahead. I arrived at 5:50 just in case...I left with my food just after 7:15. The restaurant was packed, but even at that, I watched other people with pickup times of 6:15 and 6:30 show up after me and leave before me. They checked in with me a few times, but never really seemed to process how long I'd been waiting, even when I was the last one there after the rush.

When I finally got home with our food, we realized that one of the dishes was different than what we had actually ordered, despite the assurances of the server that our orders were prepared properly. So, I essentially waited almost an hour and a half for a reserved-time meal that turned out to not be prepared properly. Ask yourself how that would go over if the same thing happened when you had a reservation to dine-in, even though you're paying the exact same price for the food...

Look, I certainly understand that businesses can get hectic on holidays, especially during a pandemic. However, if you place a timed order online (rather than an ASAP order), there's an expectation that it will be ready at least close to that time...otherwise, there's no point in even picking a time. Moreover, these types of surges should be expected on holidays, and accounted for. I'm not sure if they place limits on how many online orders can be reserved at a specific time, but that seems like a logical way to mitigate issues like this. If they already do that, then they should look at the numbers again.

Finally, while I was waiting for my food, I watched a maskless gentleman (who had also been waiting a while) arguing with an employee. I thought it was strange that the employee didn't say anything about it, until I watched the same employee then remove their mask completely while talking no more than 2 feet from a coworker. It's getting pretty frustrating watching people do stuff like this, and there's no longer an excuse. I don't care what you do at home, but when you're around me and my food, keep. your. mask. on.

Anyways, I'm giving two stars because, despite this bad experience, the butternut squash ravioli is still pretty awesome. But surge logistics very much need to be addressed, as well as employee adherence to the very simple mask guidelines we have in place for an incredibly...