Tuscano's Italian Kitchen — Restaurant in Monroe

This was our 3rd time giving this place a shot over the last 5-ish years. The time prior to this visit was carry-out at the tail end of COVID. The time before that was about 5 years ago and my wife was explosively ill immediately after. Other than the illness bit, the food is just "meh" and super bland. This evening's showing is probably a bit worse.

The selections: 0) Beef Stroganoff - It looked good, but it had very little flavor. I rarely add salt or pepper to anything. This required both and it was still, then, just salt/pepper flavored meat and noodles in a light mushroom colored cream sauce. The noodles were well cooked though. The beef was overcooked to that dry dusty texture. In the picture the ridge of the plate at the top clockwise, there's a few pieces (tiny bits) of steak, a few pieces of onion, and two of 3, three mini micro the-least-we-could-get-away-with-adding-and-not-be-called-liars mushroom bits in the whole dish. I dug around a while trying to find any mushrooms. The menu description mentions "pieces of steak" and "sliced mushrooms". Stretching the truth to its absolute breaking point from my point of view. The dish feels, and given the taste it might be worth the experiment, like a can of Campbell's condensed cream of mushroom soup, a pinch of ultra finely diced onion, an old overcooked and beat down 2 oz bottom round gnashed up (for quantity trickery), 6-8 oz of rigatoni, a tablespoon of sour cream, and a little pre-shredded parm (like what we get from Costco) and a little pinch of parsley flakes for garnish/presentation. Probably would have more mushroom and flavor though.

1. Margarita pizza - This was more of a crime than the stroganoff. The cook and crust were fine. The cheese was texture and binder only. The under ripe sliced tomatoes had more flavor than anything, including the "dash" of basil. Note that the primary flavor component of a margarita pizza is balsamic vinegar. It was no place to be found. I would bet money that they don't even pretend to add it. Absolute abject failure. If the restaurant personnel read this, change the name of this thing or strike it from the menu altogether. Or go get one from Gianni's in Everett or Whole Foods anywhere/Lynnwood to discover what such a thing is supposed to taste like.
2. kids pizzas - One had cheese and the other opted to add pepperoni. They both, boys 5 and 8, ate them w/out issue. But they have yet to actively reject any cheese/pepperoni pizza.

The service was acceptable as was the atmosphere/cleanliness.

We are unlikely to risk another visit. Before tip, the meal itself was $86. Over a c-note, all in, for food this lackluster/low quality is just plain sad. I remember when Golden Corral was a thing in Marysville/Arlington...bulk buffet style food of that caliber is comparatively...

update We were in the mood for Italian food and wanted a date night so we decided to try tuscano’s again. I am pleased to say we had amazing service, amazing food and thoroughly enjoyed our evening. Our waiter was amazing, our food was delicious and I couldn’t be more happy with our experience! We will definitely be back again. 💗

I am sad to give Tuscanos this poor review as I like to support local business and have had much different experiences there in the past. Tuscanos is our go to place for Italian food but tonight was a terrible experience. We came in and seated ourselves in the bar section, ordered drinks and an appetizer. We ordered the focaccia bread with olive oil. The bread was slightly stale and not warm like usual. Then ordered our meal. After what seemed like a long time another server came out with our food packaged to go. (We were dining in) poor girl seemed so frazzled when we told her we didn’t order food to go she barely said anything and left the table. Then about 2 minutes later our server came out with our food on plates, clearly they dumped the to go containers on plates and brought them back out. She apologized and said sorry I accidentally hit the to go button on your order. Both of our dishes were cold and neither of them had any sauce left after transferring them to our plates. So after picking at our food for a long time our server finally came to check on us and we asked if we could get some sauce since both our dishes were dry from transferring them from the to go containers. She brought us both back a tiny dipping sauce size container of sauce. But whatever, it was enough for the amount of food we would have eaten but the sauce was cold. So needless to say neither of us ate anymore. We asked for boxes (I figured I’ll just make my own sauce at home) then she proceeded to help several other people, put dishes away at the bar and still no boxes. We asked another server who brought them right over and offered to take our credit card and run our tab. Got the receipt back and we were charged an extra $6 for the sauce! I would have accepted that if we just wanted really saucy food but this was because of an error on their part from the get go! I am mostly writing this review because I know the owner takes a lot of pride in his business so I’m hoping he’ll see this and have a teaching moment with his staff. I know this isn’t the norm and I’m sure we will return at some point but it will not be as soon as our usual...

It was seat yourself in the bar for lunch, which felt very impersonal. The waitress was in a rush and never stayed at our table very long. I ordered the pasta special with one meatball. I'm super happy I only got one meatball as it was extremely dry and lacked any flavor. The pasta was cooked al dente which was nice. The waitress asked if I wanted fresh ground pepper with my salad but not with my pasta. I also got a soda and our bill was $30. I think we were charged for extra bread, which was a focaccia type bread served with olive oil. It was ok. They did ask how our meals were but were satisfied with "fine." I would not visit this restaurant again.

EDIT IN RESPONSE TO REPLY BY OWNER:

I do no take kindly to negatively reviewing places of business. My description of our visit was accurate in regards to the food and service. I have personally apologized via email in regards to my snarky comment on the cost of our food. Our waitress did not inform us AT ANYTIME that asking for an extra 3 slices of bread would be an additional charge. Based on their lack of transparency in this matter combined with their lack of quality service (we did attempt to show dissatisfaction at the table when we didnt find our food satisfactory nor did anyone stay at the table long enough to have a longer than a one word exchange) I had zero trust that they would care to address our concerns at that time. I did email the restaurant in addition to writing the review. The restaurant responded to the review rather than the email. For this reason and his response I am convinced of...