Abbiocco — Restaurant in Monmouth Beach

I wanted to like this place. Maybe I will in the future.

We arrived ten minutes early for our reservations and we were told that we had to wait 10 minutes to be seated, that we could not be seated early, and we were encouraged to go to the bar. We were going to have wine anyway so we went to the bar. 30 minutes later we had to ask if our table was ready yet and we were told that it would be in a few minutes. We had to close out at the bar and then we were instructed to take our on glasses and wine and bring it to our table.

The service and management so far was questionable at best.

We ordered four delicious dishes and a great bottle of wine. The food and drink were by far the best part of the meal. The staff was young and immature, although our waitress was great, but it seemed like they opened too early, did not know what they were doing, and were overwhelmed.

While I am completely in favor of high school students working in places like this, I'm not sure that they should be running the show. That's what it seemed like. I spent $200 on dinner for 2, but I did not get $200 service.

I will return next year with the hopes that the experience gets better, otherwise I will not return. There are too many other great restaurants in the area to settle for less...

We went here recently on a Sunday night and it was nice and quiet as expected. The outdoor dining was closed so we ate inside. Very nice dining room and atmosphere with a great view of the water and the large yachts in the marina. My filet mignon was excellent and the cut of meat was top notch. The soup was good but wasn’t worth $18. My wife had the chicken parmigiana and said it was just OK and she has had much better at other restaurants. I can’t remember what the other couple had for dinner but they said theirs was OK as well but not outstanding. This restaurant was insanely expensive so we will not be returning. For the 4 of us the final tab was over $425 with tip and we didn’t even order a bottle of wine. Some of us split appetizers and the guys had a couple of drinks and a glass of house wine while the ladies had one drink. My suggestion to this restaurant is to cut back on the portions and the price of the appetizers. For example don’t serve a bowl of soup for $18, serve a cup instead at a lower price. My wife had the meatball appetizer which was also pricey with 3-4 big meatballs. Nobody wants that much food before the main course. My wife said if we are going to spend over $100 a person for dinner we would rather go to Angelica’s...

We had a terrible experience at Abbiocco. First of all, your bartender had no idea what a Boulevardier was. I had to tell him how to make it. We ordered the octopus which was actually delicious, but the beans were ice cold..I mean refrigerator cold. That went back. Our other app was “in carozza”which came out cold in the center. As soon as the captain saw it he knew it wasn’t cooked thru and took that back and refired it. When it came out properly, it was delicious. The eggplant Pam was our middle course and was very good. For mains, we ordered two pastas: amatriciana and pasta w clam sauce. The clams were over cooked and uneatable- that went back and was never returned. The amatriciana’s sauce was excellent but the pasta was far from al dente as ordered- in fact it was gummy. All in all we had a terrible meal, yet your server was excellent and her tip reflected her poise and excellent effort to serve us is very difficult conditions. Too bad...as we had very high hopes...