Mangia Mangia — Restaurant in Lyons Township

My wife and I have wanted to try this place for quite some time and finally decided to have dinner here one day. We had found a groupon for the place and were expecting to have a nice Italian dinner for a good deal, but that was not the case. The service was mediocre at best. Waiter approached us acting like he didnt even want to be there, he just wanted to get our order and be done, which was awkward. This should have been our first sign of what was to come but we ordered thinking that the food would make up for the mediocre service. However that was not the case. They started us off with bread and butter and since they claimed to be an authentic Italian restaurant, I expected nice warm fresh italian bread. Ohh was I wrong, the bread tasted as if it sat out for a few days and was nowhere near fresh. Maybe my expectations were a bit high but at least serve bread that isnt stale. Next came our entrees with soup or salad. I ordered the spaghetti carbonara topped with prosciutto and added chicken and had tortellini soup. My wife had fettuccine alfredo with chicken and a salad. The salad she received was a joke. It was a few pieces of lettuce with one quarter chunk of tomato and a huge glob of dressing, not appetizing at all. Her pasta dish wasnt much better. The fettuccine was overcooked, the sauce was very bland and wayy to milky and buttery and didnt taste like alfredo at all. I find that it is hard to mess up alfredo but this restraurant managed to do so. The sauce from a jar at a grocery store would have been better then what they served. Now onto my meal. I had tortellini soup and spaghetti carbonara topped with prosciutto and added chicken. The tortellini soup was nothing to brag about about. The broth was actually good but the tortellini sucked. Tortellini usually is stuffed with something but either this tortellini was stuffed with nothing or it tasted so bland that it made it seem like it was stuffed with nothing. My spaghetti carbonara was also very bland and the prosciutto tasted old and very off. And the chicken that they added to it was also very bland and without any flavor. I am not writing this to bash on a restaurant but I simply was this displeased with my visit here. I am not a picky eater at all and love going to and supporting local restaurants like this but as a place claiming to have authentic Italian food, this place was far from it. The place did have nice decor and a cozy feeling but the service and food killed it. I personally will not recommend this place to anyone and I will not be returning...

Lets start with the menu, 8 pages and about 20-30 things on each page, not to mention the second menu with another 30 or so items in it. There is no way they are keeping everything they need for that menu fresh or they would be out of business.

The table was cracked and broken, and the seats were worn and needed refinishing. It look like the place hadn't been properly cleaned in a long time, low light doesn't always hide what laziness brings out.

The waitress there took our drink orders then someone else took our food orders, and to me it seemed as if he was just substituting for her forgetting about us. Also he came around ever two mins while we were looking over the excessively large menu, and we felt rushed even though there was only 2 other tables in there at about 3pm.

Me and my fiance ordered two entrees and two appetizers. The entrees came with soup, we both went with the minestrone and were very disappointed. It wasn't hot, the veggies were chopped too big, and it tasted like they got the broth from a can. We both ate three bites and didn't want any more. The bread they served was cold and stale.

The appetizers we ordered were mozzarella sticks and a Prosciutto wrapped shrimp with cheese and pesto. The sticks were obviously frozen from a package and were probably the best part of the experience (how can you mess that up?). The shrimp was over-cooked and there was grease all over from the 4 layers of Prosciutto and cheese. The fiance wouldnt even touch them, and when I tried them I regretted it instantly.

I ordered diavola shrimp spaghetti and the fiance ordered a buttered noodle broccoli and chicken dish. The shrimp were not fresh and rubbery because they were over cooked, the sauce was not spicy at all and extremely bland, like they just poured a can of sauce on top and called it diavola. The fiances chicken looked like it had been boiled and was not seasoned at all. We each ate about 5 or 6 bites then asked for the bill. Turned out to be about 60 bucks. No cocktails, no desert, just food. Needless to say I will never go there again, and If you asked me they are on their way out...

There were three of us for dinner. Service was okay. Atmosphere was fine - better than one might expect for a restaurant in a strip mall. We hadn’t been in years but since we were in the neighborhood we stopped in. I guess Mangia Mangia is under new ownership as it’s nowhere near the food quality of the past. For appetizers we hadn’t the fried ravioli (just ok), and the stuffed artichoke (flavorless). The Italian wedding soup was decent, the best part of the entire meal. The pasta fagoili soup was thick and looked and tasted like a can of pork n’beans. Terrible and nothing like they served years ago. It gets worse from here. The gnocchi with vodka sauce was gummy and gross. It was like the dough you made to play with in kindergarten with flour and water. The sauce tasted nothing like vodka sauce. The angel hair with asparagus and sun dried tomatoes was tasteless, watery and the pasta was overcooked (mushy). The meat lasagna was drowned in sauce but the most edible of the three. The bus boy (who was very friendly) asked if we wanted our food wrapped to go as we literally ate just a few bites of each. We obviously declined. The server came and asked if we wanted dessert, never said a word about the fact that we hadn’t eaten our food or asked if anything was wrong with it. Nice enough but clueless. I left a note on the check saying the food was awful. To the new owners; why purchase a successful business and then change the quality? Cutting corners on quality is never the answer. I’d rather pay more for good quality and...