Liberatore's Ristorante & Catering — Restaurant in Maryland

On Wednesday, February 12th, 2014 I took my sister Mary Jane to dinner at Liberatore's Restaurant in Timonium, MD to celebrate her 79th birthday.

In the middle of that night I awakened as violently ill as I have ever been in my life. My sister also became ill although to a far lesser degree. A huge snowstorm that evening precluded an emergency room visit. My severe stomach cramps lasted three days making work and eating impossible and the threat of dehydration problematic.

Neither of us had eaten on the 12th prior to dining at Liberatore's in order to save appetites for the restaurant. We both had flu shots months ago and neither experienced its signature temperature, chills or muscle aches and that illness wouldn't violently strike two people simultaneously in the middle of the night. The only food we shared was the house dressing, creamy Italian. I also ate cream of crab soup but did not share that with my sister. I ate a full salad with lots of dressing and because it was large, I gave my sister a small portion of the salad. Our 5 p.m. reservation made us the first dinner seating in an otherwise empty room. Our guess is that during the interval between the lunch shift and our early dinner seating, the salad dressing was not properly handled.

By the following Monday I had completely recovered and sent a respectful note to Liberatore's manager. My note made no requests but simply informed him/her of our experience at the restaurant.

I was profoundly disappointed that Liberatore's manager chose not to acknowledge my letter by phone, voice mail, email, or letter. In my letter I asked for nothing and conceded that the restaurant business is a tough one and that mistakes happen. To make matters worse Liberatore's falsely reported to their reservation service that we were "no shows" when in fact we were early for our reservation.

While I have reasonable tolerance, even for mistakes that ruin expensive dinners, I have zero tolerance for a lack of simple courtesy. For that reason and not because of the food poisoning, we will never again patronize...

people there simple do not know how to cook. my husband's leadership team hosted a retiremenr dinner for him. there were about 12 of us. i cannot comment on all the dishes as i did not taste them all. but the ones (steak and fish) i did not taste look average at best. i ordered one appetizer oyster duo and mussels. oyster was simply disgusting .. the plating was less professional than a diner off I95, and there was more some green vegetables than anything else. two oyster shells were buried under a lump of green leaves. when i finally dug them out, both were practically empty with nothing in it except greasy cheese sauce. and you call this oyster?!!! why not call it what it is? kale green in oyster shell? my other dish was mussels. it was cooked with SO MUCH onion and garlic in tomato sauce, i asked myself "why? who would butcher mussels like this? have they not heard of white wine?" my husband ordered a pasta with an exotic name for the kind of home made pasta you'd find in puglia! (it is oriechiette) i was so surprised and thinking "they know how to make that?" so i encouraged the poor guy to get it as we absolutely love our oriechiette pasta every year we go back to southern italy. it was so grossly over cooked it is softer than over cooked chinese instant noodles! to top it off, people ordered tiramisu, cheese cake, and lemon cake. i tried all of them, all were equally dense, stale, and tasteless. tiramisu looked like a mix between crumb cake and god knows what, and it had ZERO coffee taste; cheese cake had ZERO taste of cheese and was covered in a thick layer of some white cream. all desert came in size big enough for a cow. the people around the table and i looked at each other, and we all shook our head. i wish this place would put more thought in cooking than just giving you an over size of stuff that no one wanted to touch after...

If I could give 0 starts, I would!!! I have had good experience with Liberatore’s in Perry Hall and since they didn’t have any tables, I decided to give it a try to the one in Timonium. Horrible experience. First, the waiter (Andrew, if I remember correctly) wasn’t even listening to us. I asked him for a non alcoholic cocktail and he offered coke or lemonade!! Second, we asked if they could do a seafood risotto (that’s what we usually get in Perry Hall location and we didn’t know that they had different menus) and he said they will do it. That was awful, very very salty and a lot of pepper on in (we couldn’t even eat it) Third, I ordered a pizza and french fries for my toddler (2y old) since he is picky and I thought I would have fries as a backup. Pizza was served hot, as it should be, but no caution, he put it in front of my son. Fries never came. At the last and the most important, the waiter was serving food not in a professional way. He would serve plates behind my son, passing them on top of his head and guess what happened??!!! He spilled the juice of the risotto, CRAZY HOTTT, ON MY SONS HEAD. My son started screaming and he left. I called him and told him what he did while I was comforting my son and he just said “OH”!!! No sorry, nothing!!! Asked for a manager, and explained the situation. He said I apologize, and I’ll take an entry of your bill! Sir, do I look like I care for $30??? HOT LIQUID WAS SPILLED ON MY 2yr OLD HEAD!! Than the waiter had the audacity to come and ask if we were still good or we needed the check. Horrible!...