Pizzico Ristorante Bar (Merrimack) — Restaurant in Merrimack

A friend and I have made this one of our go to spots, traveling from Manchester to get there. The service has always been great, the bartender recognizes us when we come in, and the food is awesome. We have been going there for about a year, However after last night, I'm not sure we will be returning. We arrived hungry, and quickly ordered a small buonissima pizza to have as an appetizer. After some time, we asked about the order, and the bartender, not our regular bartender, said that she forgot to put in the order. We said ok no problem, and reminded her it was the white pizza that we wanted, because that's how it was described on the menu. When a pizza did arrive, it was a different pizza literally called "The White Pizza", I can understand the confusion, but that wasn't what we wanted. So we said fine, box it up we will just take it home, somone will eat it, but we really do want the buonissima pizza, so we asked her to ahead and put that in. We were starving at this point and asked what the quickest thing she could give us was and she said some bread, and fine we'll take it! Finally the pizza arrived, and at that time, we put in our main course meal, the Sicilian Stew I believe it was called. We started to eat the pizza, which we have had before, and realize that there is no garlic on the pizza. So we just ask the bartender for some raw garlic to add because we don't taste or see any. "Well that's going to extra" she said. It's really not about the $1 up charge, but we are telling you there is no garlic, you would think she would just want to make it right. "Fine" we said, because without the garlic, it just did not taste right. I only ate a small slice of the pizza, because I wanted to save my appetite for the main course. Again, after some more time had passed, we asked about the entree, and AGAIN the bartender had not put our order in. At this point the whole deal is unacceptable. I can understand once, but twice in the same meal you did not put our order in, and you put in the wrong order the first time. At this point we were upset and just decided to take the check without our meal, and after all of the mistakes, we really felt that the pizza should have been removed from the bill, but the bartender really took no responsibility for HER actions, and when my friend suggested that the our pizza should be removed, she said "No you ate it, so I'm not taking it off." She made it clear by her lack of any apologetic behavior, that she really did not care that she messed up our entire meal. We went ahead and paid our bill, and left. On the way out we asked for a manager, which none was available, so we expressed our concern to the young hostess, and the one of the chefs in the kitchen, at which they were apologetic and said they would let management know. I've always loved this place, the food, and the service, but I don't think we will be back, and will sadly need to find a new spot. Unfortunately service really matters, and it really doesn't take a lot of effort to apologize, I hope for the owner's sake, that this matter gets addressed with that employee.

Edit 06/07/16- The owner got in touch with me on this, and basically called me a liar, he said he spoke with the bartender said that she never heard our entree order. A blatant lie, her exact words on the SECOND order the forgot was "i forgot to put that in, I was distracted by the whole garlic thing." Then he basically bribed me with a gift certificate for the entree she forgot to put in, but only if I took my review down. His priority was not correcting the experience, not taking responsibility for the actions of his staff, but getting the review taken down. The age old saying the customer is always right still applies, and I hope they will use this and learn better customer service techniques...

This place doesn’t even deserve the one star that I am giving it. I came in tonight with my family. We were seated and were told our server would be there shortly. We waited for a while for someone to approach the table. We order our drinks, food, and an appetizer – no issues. When the appetizer came, the hot plate and the contents on the plate were placed right in front of my one-year-old son, who reached right in before my husband or I could react to grab the plate in time. Thankfully, he was okay. We sat with no refills -empty to almost empty cups. We barely saw our server or were checked in on. We watched people come in after us, be seated, and right away had their server (including ours) taking orders and their drinks and food coming out. We arrived at 4:57 pm, and by 5:57 pm, we were getting a little annoyed that none of our food was out after sitting for an hour. The time we arrived was pretty light in the seating area so we didn’t expect service to exceed so long. We eventually got up after over an hour of waiting and asked for the check three times, which our request was ignored, and then we requested it the fourth time when we asked the guy at the front desk for it. Eventually, a manager was called, and she stated that the whole bill needed to be paid even though we NEVER received our meal, just our drinks and an appetizer. She even ADMITTED to my husband that our order was just placed a few minutes ago, just before coming to the desk. After stating multiple times that we just wanted to pay for the drinks and the appetizer, she and my husband ended up in an unnecessary back-and-forth conversation (argument) and a bunch of excuses on why we never got our order in or food delivered. We are a family of restaurant workers, so we understand how it works, but she admitted that our meals that we were waiting over an hour for was never placed, and it wasn’t until we requested four times for a check so we could leave and go somewhere else that the food was “arriving.” By the time we were able to leave, about an hour and a half of our time was wasted in hopes of just having a nice dinner out. The whole experience was unprofessional with the server we had and the manager herself. This negative experience will not have us return any time soon. We were disappointed with this place as it is close to our house, and we wanted to enjoy trying a new places...

I don't often write reviews, but this was definitely worth sharing for the benefit of others: Went to grab dinner with my daughter on the way to a movie but should have read Yelp reviews before going. Went in with plenty of time to have a simple salad and a few drinks.

Can't vouch for the food because we got tired of waiting after 50min for it to arrive.

Service was awful! Rude, poor attitude, and slow--she couldn't service more than one table at a shot, then it was at least 5min before she would return to the dining area each time! It started with waiting 10min before she even arrived at our table for a drink order, though she had been close-by at other tables. By that time we had already decided what to order and, noticing already how slow she was, we thought it better to order our meals right away--this apparently offended her and she copped an attitude. Another 10min before drinks and bread arrived---almost 1/2-hour before I had a drink in front of me! By this time we could see what we were up against and my daughter started looking at Yelp reviews which described our experience almost exactly. We waited another 20min and she hadn't returned to even see if we wanted drink or bread refills (again she had been at other tables close by). After 50 minutes of sitting there, I decided we'd had enough. I asked the hostess to get the manager, told her we were done and that I would pay for the drinks but cancel the dinner and get my check right away. Only then did the waitress (if you can call her that) decide to stop by and rudely try to explain that we ordered tips and chicken on our salads, which takes time--no apology, no can I get you anything, nothing but attitude and rudeness, and no matter what: a salad does not take 50min!

After another 5min waiting for the check, I slapped a $20 on table and we walked out. 1 hour of my life...