Bobby C's Ristorante — Restaurant in Melrose

In a final response to the owner of Bobby C's Ristorante, Julie Ann Crowley, I'd like to say that we were not looking for a fight and that the review was not mean spirited. The start of the review says we had eaten there before and liked an entree and returned to the restaurant. Also, we did not complain about the delay in being acknowledged when we entered, the slow service, the smell of Windex, nor the lack of lobster in the meal. In fact, we tolerated all of these issues. The one thing we wouldn't tolerate is finding ricotta (not part of the entree) under the plate of pasta. It is this issue that Julie Ann Crowley never addressed at the restaurant nor in her reply to my review.

Although I’d been before and liked one particular entrée, I would NEVER return – lousy service, gross food. On Saturday night, we called for an 8:30 reservation and they said fine. Two of us had been before and knew the food to be good. Well, we arrived and waited by the hostess area for 5 minutes before being acknowledged. We should have known then to leave. It’s one thing to wait to be seated, but quite another to wait to simply be greeted by someone. When we were seated, my sister-in-law had to clean her seat because there was what looked like chocolate frosting on it. At the same time, another big party across from us was just leaving. One of the waitresses began cleaning the tables with Windex, so that’s what we smelled while we waited for our waitress to arrive – another 5 minutes. I ordered the shrimp and lobster fra diavolo over angel hair before and really liked it so I ordered it again. The sauce, shrimp and pasta dish had been very good the last time. But, this night I couldn’t find much lobster – two tiny bits were definitely lobster, the other little pieces could have been anything. But, because the shrimp and sauce were good, I ignored the fact that I paid $27.99 for shrimp alone – not really lobster. As I ate, what looked like melted cheese on my fork appeared. Mind you, I did not put any cheese on my pasta. Upon closer inspection, I found a clump of ricotta cheese at the bottom of my plate! Yuck! I’ve never heard of this combination! So, I asked the waitress how my plate was prepared. She didn’t know so went to ask the chef. No cheese was supposed to be in the pasta. So, I’m thinking, did they give me someone else’s leftovers? Yuck! The waitress originally said she’d take the $27.99 off the bill. When she returned she said she could only take $10 off because the owner was not there and she had no authority. We asked to speak to the chef who never came out. As we were leaving, a woman asked us how dinner was. Guess what? She was the owner. Our waitress said she was gone for the night. So, the owner was a coward who couldn’t face a customer complaint. First, we told her how the waitress ignored us, we had to smell Windex during dinner, and then my pasta had ricotta in it. She insulted me by saying I didn’t complain until I ate the shrimp and lobster! Well, I didn’t see the ricotta until I was pretty much done with the shrimp (2 left) and half the pasta. This left me with literally a bad taste for the restaurant and even more frustration...

My wife and I went for Sunday Brunch. We walked in the door at about 1:05 in the afternoon and stood there for a good two-three minutes while all the staff stood there looking at us. There were dozens (maybe up to a hundred) empty seats. Finally a man (definitely not a gentleman) came up to us and said "what do you want?" My wife replied, "Isn't this the brunch?" He walked away and talked to another woman. This other woman (far from a lady) comes over and says, "We can only seat you at the bar, all the other seats are reserved." My wife is not comfortable sitting at a bar to eat.

The woman tried to explain that the reservations were for one o'clock, but when I questioned that it was after one she said two o'clock. Now that was about 45 minutes away at this point. So I asked why we couldn't sit at a table given the length of time. She walked away to look at her reservation book and my wife relented so we sat at the bar.

In the time we were there 75% of the empty seats never had a person sit in them, so we were denied a table for no reason. On our way out I walked up to the woman who from what she said is the owner to point that out in a very normal tone of voice. She said don't holler at me in my restaurant. I said I never hollered and she told me to leave her restaurant now or she was going to call the police.

So obviously if the owner is there and you voice any displeasure with their establishment you will be threatened with the police. Totally insane behavior...

Just got back from dinner. Pretty sure our waiter was having the worst night or he had absolutely no experience as a waiter. We had to wait a little while to be asked for our drink order (party of 6). When we asked him what the martini drink special was he didn’t know what it was and had to go to the bar to find out. We then asked if he could help decide between two different martinis and he told us to “just get that one”. He walked away and came back with our drinks 10-15 minutes later.

After we got our drinks he left and never came back to ask if we wanted apps or to order so we had to flag him down (while he was just standing around looking in his wallet). After we finished our apps he never cleared our plates and brought out our meals. He tried to place our meal plates down in between the appetizer plates. We actually had to ask him to clear the app plates away. When we were finished eating he took my friends plate away from her while she was still eating and my other friend didn’t like or eat her dish and he just cleared it away. Without even asking if there was a problem or if she wanted to take it home.

We asked to see the dessert tray and he came back with the check. All in all he was very unfriendly and appeared to not even want to be there. We were all disappointed and will...