Naples 15 — Restaurant in Madison

What a MESS. I am very confused about all the good reviews of this place. So much went wrong I need to categorize it. I want to say that I have lived in Madison for 5 years and I have always wanted to try and eat at Naples 15. However I must have called them (about 5 calls) only during their busy times because I never spoke to anyone, I just got the busy tone on repeat. However, for my birthday my husband I decided to try just walking in. We understood it was a Saturday night and that means it can be busy.

Service: To start our waiter was very kind. However that hostess is greatly overworked. Why is your hostess running around the restaurant setting and moving tables? Why is your owner taking selfies at the bar and making small talk while she is busting her ass? She was so overworked that no one spoke to us about getting a table for at least 25 min. We understood that we were walk-ins so we needed to be patient. Also why is the seating area covered in dusty old photographs? Like on the seats themselves. That was an interesting choice. Once we got seated then the owner decided to start working and abruptly asked us to move to a different table. Then the hostess had a tense conversation with the owner and they ultimately decided to ignore us and let us remain at the table. Very strange

Atmosphere/Table Setting: I believe like that place is WAY over capacity. There is barely ANY room between the tables (so little room that another waiter, just trying to pass by, knocked my water slightly which made the table wet). I also noticed that some of the tables were folding tables, like the heavy duty plastic ones with a table cloth over it. This packed place was so loud that you heard everyone's conversation, and everyone heard yours.

We were so close to the other folding table (yeah eating your $50 entree on a folding table seems pretty peak I know) that we had a fun conversation with them on how they ordered 4 Shirley temples, their waiter brought them 3 drinks and told the last girl she would have to wait 15min for their soda machine to resupply LOL.

Menu: Why are there 6 menus (I am not exaggerating) I will list them out for you to prove this: 1.The food menu The pizza menu 3.The historic fluff menu The specials menu The drink menu The wine bottle menu

To top this off, they were all dirty and FULL of typos. Like why are you tell me a story about Italy in the description of a ragu sauce? Why are some parts of the menu italicized and others not? Also the increase in prices made by a sticker label maker was hilarious and inaccurate! My husband tried ordering a fish dish that was $45, however, the waiter informed him upon ordering that the dish was actually $75! Please, just reprint your menus, and maybe delete half of the content because the food ain't it (I'll get there next).

Food: My husband and I think that due to the place being definitely over fire safety capacity, the kitchen is also overworked and under a big time pressure to serve way too many tables. This probably causes them to cook at a higher temperature to quicken cook times. This also caused them to burn our appetizer and our salmon entree. The salmon was BLACK when we turned it upside down. Some of the calamari pieces were burned that they tasted like charcoal. On top of this why was the puttanesca just regular red sauce from the dollar store? Literally pureed tomatoes with no spices, not very appetizing.

The Bill: If you thought the nightmare was over after the food you would be wrong. The bill comes and there is a 5% hidden 'service fee' (reminder we are a party of 2 on a fold-out table. Maybe the market for fold-out tables is booming and they are just trying to recuperate their losses, I wouldn't know). On top of this there is a 3% charge for using a credit card. Excuse me? A fee for using a credit card in 2025? For an upscale restaurant that is changing their $45 fish dishes to $75 fish dishes. That is real greed right there. Stop trying to dodge credit card fees, you are an upscale restaurant!

TLDR: Skip this place and go...

I would put this restaurant in the tourist trap category. You acknowledge they fooled you once, but you will not let them fool you twice. We were there to have an enjoyable evening before dropping off our child at college, as were many other families. The good: When you take a sip of water, someone will show up a second later with a pitcher to refill your water. When the server realized our experience started poorly and had grown worse, he brought us champagne. Sure, our boys are both under age, but it's Wisconsin and his thought was nice. The ragu sauce on my wife's pasta was good until she encountered the ball of fat that stopped her eating. The bill did not show a line item for the salad they never served; that's always an uncomfortable discussion. And now let's talk about why we will not return. Perhaps this statement sums up what you can expect: the server does not write your order. He "memorizes" it...and you know where this is going, just as we did when we saw him begin this "impressive" level of service. He forgot the drinks, the salad, the bread and my son's food order. Here is some constructive criticism, Mr. Server or Mr. Owner: write those orders. You might think it looks like inelegant service, but your customers hate asking twice for items. My wife and I each ordered a glass of wine, which totaled $24. The server recommended a $150 bottle of wine instead. Hmm; I do not see how those dot connect. We declined. That's an upselling strategy I do not care for, but it occurs again during our ordering process. My son ordered the chateaubriand, which showed approx $45 on the menu. The server said they were out and he recommended another steak, to which my son agreed. It seems we should have asked the price on that recommendation. If you are curious, the bill showed $75. They served our calamari cool, so it had been sitting for a while. They dumped a scoop of salt and seasoning on the calamari right before serving it, so that was the worst appetizer I have ordered in a long time. We were a party of four and they served my wife's meal and my meal first. We waited for a few minutes for the other 2 meals to show up, but they did not, so my wife and I began. We had finished our meals when my son's steak showed up, so at this point, we had 3 of 4 meals on the table. The person who delivered the 3rd meal asked about the 4th meal, thereby proving what we had suspected--the server forgot my son's order for a pizza. That son was rather hungry at that point, so we reminded the server about the bread order (and the drink order) he forgot to bring: That son had some bread to nibble while he waited for his pizza. Now at this point, my other son is digging into his $75 steak and he asks me to try it because he thinks they have forgotten the salt. Yes, that steak had no salt and if you were wondering if a steak that has no salt is boring--the answer is YES. If the cooks could have taken that extra seasoning from the calamari and dumped it on the steak, that steak might have been edible. The food, service and price tag did not balance, but we had a fun time discussing the mediocre restaurant on our walk back...

About three months ago, I did extensive research to find one of Madison’s “top” restaurants for a post-graduation dinner with my family. This wasn’t just any dinner—my metro Detroit Italian family has owned and worked in restaurants, traveled, and dined everywhere. They don’t impress easily, and I needed a place that could deliver. Me? I can tolerate a mediocre meal—but at $110 a head, this was exceptionally disappointing.

I called weeks in advance to set the reservation. After three weeks of phone tag with the manager, I started to believe I was about to eat at a three-star Michelin restaurant. I reserved a patio table for five.

The setting? Folding chairs that were visibly dirty and stained champagne flutes. Not the intro I was hoping for. Our server was lovely—warm, attentive, and doing her best. Unfortunately, the rest of the service and the food didn’t follow suit.

They began with four preset appetizers. First: a caprese salad. It was fine. Second: a single slice of Margherita pizza. The dough was excellent—but a slice? And no new plates? It started feeling less like fine dining and more like a cafeteria tasting menu. Third: a scallop. Well-executed, I’ll give them that. Fourth—and the dish I’ll have nightmares about—was the eggplant Parmesan. Traditionally, especially in Naples, the eggplant is fried. Here, it was baked. The result? A watery marinara, a whisper of cheese, and sponge-textured eggplant that barely passed as edible.

For entrées, we ordered Chilean Sea Bass and the Filetti di Pollo. The sea bass was the highlight. The Filetti di Pollo, however, tasted like a frozen microwave dinner—slivers of chicken, undercooked pasta, and a hefty serving of disappointment.

Dessert was hit or miss. The tiramisu came in three states: freezer-burnt, half-frozen, or (occasionally) decent. I understand prepping desserts ahead of time, but rotate them properly if you’re charging this much.

To end the night, my family asked for cappuccinos with coffee liqueur. The waiter instead tried convincing my mother—who’s owned multiple restaurants in Florida—that cappuccino and Sambuca were “basically the same.” Respectfully, they are not. One is a sweet, anise-flavored digestif; the other is, quite literally, coffee with liqueur. Telling that to an Italian is like calling Baileys and grappa interchangeable—good luck with that.

As a final flourish, they played music for two minutes from a dinky Bluetooth speaker that sounded like it came from a clearance bin at CVS.

If you’re looking to impress your Italian family, this isn’t the place. If you’re craving overhyped entrees, defrosted desserts, and audio ambiance from a pocket speaker—then by all means,...