Contessa Miami — Restaurant in Miami

There should be a new Webster Dictionary entry for 2023: To get Carboned-- i.e. to get charged a disgusting amount of cash to eat at a pretentious restaurant serving Major Food Group "Italian American" food that is really a glorified version of Stoufer main courses or DiGiorno pizza. The appetizers set the tone for the food quality and delivery. The prosciutto was served as a fatty suine 100g of ham served simply on a plate. Even a carnivore like myself has a hard time eating 100g of raw ham with no bread carbs. When I enquired whether some bread was available, the waitress suggested I order the burrata cause that came with bread 😂. Sure let me order an average $25 burrata so I can get a couple of slices of bread!! The tonno appetizer tasted like someone had mixed a few Chick-fil-A sauces and dumped on some raw artichokes and suspicious look tiny tuna pieces. Very weird combo. When I enquired about the "genovese" pasta, I was told that it basically was some glorified Carbone pesto sauce with stracciatella. Now we all can Google "genovese" sauce on Google and we know that ain't it. There is some 100 nonnas in Naples ready to hit the Contessa food curator over their head with their rolling pins, don't these guys always pride themselves of how they spend time cooking in Italy? Get ur names straight! Wth! Having skipped the fake Genovese I was served a chicken "Francese" which was a Flintstone size slab of battered half cooked chicken on a bed of spinach. Turned out the spinach was the best part of the dish. Guess quantity over quality is the MFG mantra. The branzino was fine but tiny(funny how the portions shrink on the more expensive items), the pizza was sad looking but at least edible, so that's a win. Overall this would have been just a forgettable evening at an overpriced place where room esthetic dominate and food is an afterthought, had the service been acceptable. But that wasn't even the case on a not so busy Sunday evening. Our wine glasses were left empty for a good 20 minutes after our mains were served. If you can't be attentive with the wine just leave the bottle next to me so I can fill my own sad empty glass MFG!! Having given up on dessert since the waitress disappeared for 25 minutes after the busboy brought us the dessert menu, she came back with the check only to tell us "Oh, you still have some wine, let me fill your glasses!" Sure let me do some sauvignon shots on my way out so I can just forget the ignominy of this dining experience !! Overall it's really shameful how this cash grabbing establishment peddles some subpar food as Italian or Italian American and people that don't know better even rave about it. Hopefully once the fad dies, this place will come to the end it duly deserves so a decent establishment can take its prime location. Til then stay away. Go to doma in Wynwood if you want an upscale Italian meal. Don't get...

We reserved The Contessa for 12 persons to celebrate a ladies night out x mas party ... No one had been to Contessa and we were ALL so excited ,the pictures showed a beautifully designed space and amazing food. I am an interior designer and boutique owner etc. The women attending consisted of influential clients and managers ... I was going to spend approx 300.00 per person.... but unfortunately instead of welcoming us when we first arrived a junior manager was called and thus began the insane behavior refusing to seat us even thought 3/4 (8 ) of the party was there . She also wanted me to understand that we would have to leave our table by 8 15 (reservation time was 6 30) once the discussion began In the mean time all I wanted was to seat and start ordering appetizers and drinks , but she refused and proceeded to call over a senior manager whom only was concern with " her team" and our treatment of "her team" when I mentioned that we had already lost over 30 minuets in the discussion and now it was almost an hour into our reservation thus we would have to eat and leave within 50 minuets she extended the reservation for 30 mins. but that we were going to be a little tight on our table due to that they did not have a table large enough to seat 9 (WE HAD A RESERVATION FOR 2 TABLES one for 8 and one for 4) .... She took us to THE TABLE which was a table for 5 and they placed 10 chairs around so since the chairs could not fit 4 chairs were approx. over a foot from the table ,,,,, so unacceptable sooo inhospitable .... I do not even blame these two incompetent women ,,,,, THIS IS THE PROBLEM OF THE MANAGEMENT/OWNERS giving power to very small minds .... Who trained these people, they were sooooo unkind, rude, vindictive ..... We were 9 beautifully dressed women , business owners , mothers, important people in this community .... just there to have an amazing nite and instead WE WERE THE ONES THAT WERE being ABUSED DISRESPECTED .... but at the end you did us a favor we left and went to NOVIKOV WITHOUT RESERVATIONS 10 WOMEN .....IN MINUTES THEY PREPARED A TABLE WITHOUT EVEN ALL 10 NOT BEING PRESENT....what a shocker!!!!!!! The manager was impeccably dressed (the managers of Contessa looked like they were homeless... no makeup,inexpensive wrinkled clothes, uncombed hair etc. NOVIKOV had amazing food, but the personal service of even the OWNER stopped by our table to compliment us, and...

Awful restaurant interior design 8/10 ambiance 9/10 food 2/10 service absolutely 0 Let's start with the fact that if you want to change your reservation either earlier or later, there is no way you can get in touch with them because instead you have to send an email, and they will get back to you who knows when. Anyways we showed up at our orginal time and in time for our reservation the hostess told us to sit in the bar while we waited for our table then she came and said our table was ready and took us to the upstairs side just to realize our table was already taken then after walking around all the restaurant we went back again to downstairs then our server shows up and he was the best server to the 3 other tables he had except for us he was taking forever in fact barely check on us because he was too busy trying to figuring out where the people next 2 tables after us were from and so on I was able to heard all the conversation when we got our food I kinda felt like my trhoat was hurting because it had rain and I was getting sick so I was desperate to order a hot tea so I could start enjoying my dinner we'll forget about that because 10 min passes 20 passes 35 minutes and then 45 min passes and he still doesn't come by so I gave up and told my partner to take the food home and just ask for the check then he finally arrived and didn't even ask how was our food which is mediocre we order Artichoke salad 7/10 Some pizza with spicy aioli 8/10 These were the only good things because we ordered a bolognese pasta, shrimp pasta, and lamb shop, and it was pretty mediocre, so we finally asked for our check, which he didn't listen to. We supposed we told our busser we wanted the check, but nothing happened. Then we finally saw another kind and lovely lady server, and she brought it right away. Unfortunately, we picked a horrible restaurant to celebrate. Don't waste your time here unless you are a basic person who only goes to places for photos; otherwise, if you go for the food, it's not worth it at all. The only good thing I have to say is that I was impressed that it didn't have the service charge included, so that helped to leave our server with a mediocre tip just...