Nonna Maria's Italian Deli & Market — Restaurant in Matthews

My friend and I were so excited to go to this place today. Charlotte "Italian"...isn't. Let's get the positive out of the way. The person behind us in line was nice to talk with. The food quality and flavor was authentic and really delicious.

The rest of the experience was truly terrible. Four small tables and patrons wouid grab them when they walked in to save them, then sat for over an hour, mostly without any food. Some of that was because they were done. The rest was just inconsiderate people. That isn't the restaurant's fault, but four tables, really? If you go here, please be considerate and don't be a table hog, or plan for take out and stand while you wait.

There is no place to wait for your order. It felt like ours took a full day to order and another full day to receive. This is a sub with four ingredients. 30+ minutes waiting (in a short) line to order and 30+ more minutes for that apparently complicated sub. With travel and actual eating, it was 2.5 HOURS for lunch. A lunch sub, not a full meal.

We spent much of our time trying to guide others. There are no signs for a line to order, a line to pickup, or a line to wait. No one knows what to do and no employees ever talked to these waiting customers.

One person taking orders? Really? A few times it took nearly 10 minutes to take an order for 1-2 sandwiches! Ten plus people "working" but no person from the NY/NJ/MA area has ever moved this slowly and acomplished so little. The line waiting was talking about only this. These people must have been bused in from someplace.

This place needs some serious process improvement. Not many people have 2-3 hours to "grab a sub."

There's so much more to grump about but why bother. When we got home, much of our order was wrong, so we're nearly $50 and 3 hours into a sub lunch we didn't order. Fool me once...

I hope that they make changes and survive. The food was truly delicious, but $13 for a tiny sub? I think not. And I'm not kidding, I ate another meal about 30 minutes after eating this tiny $13 sub. The experience was bad enough that we were considering calling for a credit, and...

We went on a Saturday afternoon to taste Corrado Gelato (Bacio is to die for..). I had great expectations here my review: The good: Excellent selection of imported products from Italy, from some of the cold cuts meats and cheeses to the canned foods, Christmas sweets My sandwich was a 4 out of 5, I take a star off because you can't put balsamic vinegar (not even listed on the menu) on a sandwich where the main ingredients are imported prosciutto and burrata cheese, it just overpowers everything else. Also the bread is nothing to brag about it. I also bought 2 dry salami, one spicy and one regular. We liked the regular one a lot. The bad: Not a single item in the store has a price tag, which to me is unacceptable, especially for a place that has been in business for almost a year. Sandwich prices... everything is $13.99... seriously? I can understand a premium price for the ones with the imported cold cuts and cheese but the rest are overpriced The ordering area was very crowded but it also seemed like it took forever to place the order in, we inquired about pricing for several items (chestnuts, pandoro, and others) and it appeared that only the owner knew.... Seating can be challenging and indeed, it took us 30 minutes to find a table Coffee/Espresso altho they have a machine behind the counter we couldn't find anything on the menu Sweets and cakes all seemed to be manufactured industrially (doesn't scream Nonna made it at home) We will visit Nonna Maria again perhaps during the week to give it another chance... but please...

Update:

I wanted to write this review due to the quality of food received with the past couple of orders. The first time…I get it, there are some days when things goes wrong. But it seems to be a consistent issue. I ordered a number 4 today which comes with burrata, prosciutto, and arugula. Upon unwrapping the sandwich, i noticed the yellowed arugula right away. There was so much of it. And when I opened the sandwich, it was appalling to see that not only were the arugula old and yellow…some were also at the point of rotting. Yet they filled my sandwich with it.

This cannot be an oversight. This was not one or two leaves. This was blatant and obvious arugula that have turned bad and should not be used or served to customers. Also I can smell that they’ve gone bad. So there is no way the person making the sandwich didn’t notice.

I will also say that there was no burrata in this sandwich. It was sliced mozzarella…which is fine. But not what I paid for.

Also, I opened the container of burrata that I bought separately. It looks very cloudy and chunky and smelled a little sour. But I took it out and gave it a rinse to see…tasted it. The whole thing tasted very sour inside and out. Absolutely unacceptable.

It’s very disappointing and disgusting. I hope they do better. But I’m not going back for a while.

Past review:

These are the only sandwiches that will satisfy my pregnancy cravings. Everyone here is super nice and I’m thankful that...