Lombardino's Restaurant — Restaurant in Madison

My wife and I visited Lombardino's for the first time on May 21, 2022. The short version of my review is, "Go there. Go there now! Go there tonight if you can."

I cannot think of a single negative thing to say about our experience. The food was maybe the best we've ever had, top to bottom. The service was impeccable.

I'll start with the service, which is where many otherwise good restaurants fall short. I use Carl as an example since he was our waiter, but it looked to me as if every member of the waitstaff was doing his or her job the same wonderful way.

Carl always seemed to be at our table at exactly the right time, but without seeming at all intrusive. When he brought our drinks to the table and took our appetizer order, he asked if we were also ready to order entees. Although we were, we hesitated because we were hoping for a long, relaxing dinner, and at so many other restaurants have felt rushed by having the entrees arrive before we had finished the appetizers. We didn't say this out loud, but Carl immediately sensed our hesitation and offered his assurance that everything would arrive at the table exactly when we were ready for it, not before and not later.

Through what I'm sure was a masterful interaction between Carl, the Chefs, and the rest of the kitchen staff, Lombardino's lived up to his promise. Our calamari appetizer arrived at the table just as we had had time to "settle in", drink a bit of our wine, and switch from workday mode to relax mode. Better yet, when it arrived, the calamari was so fresh out of the fryer that we actually had to let it cool down a bit before we could eat it. It had clearly not been sitting under a food warmer waiting for Carl to pick it up. A few minutes after we had finished the calamari, but not so quickly that we felt rushed, one of the waitstaff picked up our dished. Within moments, Carl was at the table to ask if we wanted more drinks. (Note that he didn't ask if we were ready for our entrees, or even suggest that we should be.)

Carl brought our second glasses of wine to the table and gave us a few minutes to talk and enjoy the wine. At the perfect moment, our entrees arrived. Again, they had clearly gone from preparation to plating to our table within seconds. Hot, fresh, and beautiful.

I had a chance to see at least part of how Lombardino's pulls this off. At one point I visited the men's room, which requires you to walk down a hallway that passes the kitchen door. Although it seemed that the waitstaff was always on the floor taking care of their customers, I noticed that two or three of them, including Carl, were standing in the hallway, apparently doing nothing. As I was passing I heard someone inside the kitchen yell, "CARL!". Within a second, he had opened the kitchen door, been handed a plate(s), and was on his way to a table with the order. It was finely tuned artists and craftsmen in action.

The food. Oh, the food. The calamari was perfectly cooked, hot, crisp, and full of flavor. I normally pass on the dipping sauce that most restaurants serve with calamari, opting for salt only, since the sauce always seems to mask the flavor of the squid. Lombardino's sauce is delicate enough to let the flavor shine through and even enhance/compliment the calamari.

My wife ordered the Tagliatelle with Shrimp and I had the Lamb Ragu & Goat Cheese Ravioli. Both were amazing. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente. The shrimp were a perfect size so that you could get one of them and a twist of tagliatelle into a "polite" mouthful. The sauce on each was ideal. My only regret is that the next time I visit Lombardino's, I'll have to choose between ordering one of these dishes again, or trying one of the many other options that sound just as good.

Apparently many other people have the same opinion of Lombardino's. We arrived 5:15PM, just 45 minutes after they opened, and I'm pretty sure we got the only table that was still available.

And, frosting on the cake, the entire...

The hostess and waiter were great both times I went because I was staying at the hotel across the street and this place had been recommended. Both times I had an app and an entree. The app I liked the most was the calamari- but some pieces were a bit chewy which is never a good sign. If you come here and get a caprese, it's the chef's interpretation of a caprese, as if you explained what a caprese is in Russian to a Inuit and that in turn got translated to a Venezuelan who translated it back into English. If you order a caprese here, expect a semi-melted lump of mozzarella in the middle of a bowl with a swampy cherry tomato/balsamic bouillabaisse and two slices of toasted bread. I couldn't even taste the mozzarella which, to me, is part of the joy of a caprese. The ravioli in the lamb ragu was decent- though it was easy to tell that the ravioli was cooked too long, the flavors were good. The rappini and hot sausage with orecchiette with garlic sauce was another misfire. The garlic sauce overpowers the rappini and hot sausage to the point all you taste is butter and garlic, you know you're eating the rapini and sausage because of how they feel in your mouth, but their tastes are overpowered. If you eat that entree, you'll be experiencing that butter/garlic creme for the rest of the night and into the following morning. This is not a cheap place to eat, and I was really hoping for better based on all of the reviews, so much so that I went back twice after thinking the first time was a fluke (chalked up to Covid reboot or whatever). My experiences here make me wonder if the owners actually eat the food this place serves and if all the people leaving amazing 5 star reviews have ever actually eaten at a really proper Italian restaurant (or if they go to Applebees when they're hungry for a steak). The Lombardinos of today wouldn't last more than six months in the tri-state area out east before shutting their doors due to lack of business. The chef must be a chain smoker who lost his taste buds a long time ago. And again, the wait staff were excellent. Not their fault I'll never...

Whatever you've heard about this restaurant it must be based on very very old information this place sucked! Greasy tasteless and over cheesy.. Aside from the dirty curtain that you have to part walking in, you immediately get the sense that it's going to stink like someone's old basement -which it did. The odors of shrimp scampi ,way past its prime, wafted to my table like something out of a disease Laden Gynecology Clinic!!! The staff walk around with cold bread and rancid olive-oil like some scientologists trying to get you to join their cult. It's awful bread it's cold, --probably frozen originally- and is absolutely tasteless. The least they could do is warm it up and serve it with some butter like every other Italian restaurant you go to! Or at least serve with olive oil that's been certified by the FDA or something! their sauce is a meat sauce but they can make a marinara on request which is really absurd.

The decor is horrible! Like something that you might see on the TV show Hoarders. It's not even ruined finery! It's greasy knick-knacks should have been cleaned and dusted 10 years ago. For a real treat you might look in the fake balcony complete with wrought-iron banister -stuffed with junk on the main wall and the Fountain of Trevi looks like something great grandpa made in his leisure time after his eyes went bad.

I really don't understand people that have given this place positive reviews it's disgusting. The odors linger like ghosts from all the bad meals you've ever had in your life haunting the place.

The staff however was excellent. Our server,Sarah, was wonderful and the gentleman who took our reservation was very nice. The guy that seated us was very nice everyone there is extremely nice. I knew it was too good to be true! And it was! Stay away from here go Papavero instead if you like very fresh wholesome beautifully prepared ...