Cafè Giotto — Restaurant in Montclair

I typically leave positive reviews, with the occasional critique when warranted—and unfortunately, this experience falls into the latter category.

When we arrived, there were about six tables in the dining area, with only one occupied. I politely asked the hostess if we could be seated at a slightly larger table for three, as my guest and I tend to order more than average. The two-top tables were quite small—barely enough room for two bowls and a water bottle. However, both the hostess and the manager (or owner) declined the request.

To make matters worse, within five minutes, another party of two entered, requested the same larger table—and were accommodated without issue. It was disappointing and confusing to witness such inconsistent treatment.

Shortly after, a server began offering complimentary small slices of pizza to guests—but our table was skipped entirely. That felt unnecessarily dismissive.

As for the meal, I ordered the scallops and shrimp over a cucumber, tomato, and onion chopped salad. Priced at $35, I was surprised to see that it came without any side—no vegetables, no pasta, nothing. I added a side of spaghetti with garlic and oil for $11, hoping it would round out the meal.

Unfortunately, the main dish consisted of just three very small scallops and three small shrimp atop a generous portion of chopped vegetables—far from what I'd expect for the price. The side of pasta was a particularly small portion, likely less than 1/8 cup, and gone in a few bites. Overall, the portion sizes were underwhelming and the pricing seemed excessive for what was served.

While our waitress was friendly and attentive, the initial attitude from the hostess left a poor impression from the start.

I don't take writing negative reviews lightly, but this experience genuinely fell short of expectations. Regrettably, I won’t...

We used to be regulars at this restaurant and enjoyed the dishes. Unfortunately both the outdoor seating and the manager have changed for the worse. My very easy to make Avocado Quinoa salad, which I’ve enjoyed many times before, contained the outer pit stem due to sloppy preparations , as well as the actual pepper corns from the pecorino cheese which was shredded into only a few small shards. Once I saw these inedible salad ingredients I was done eating and consumed maybe 1/3 of the salad while my husband, who can consume pepper, had some of the rest as we removed the unappetizing pieces. Despite the server informing the manager that she had seen these 4 peppercorns and the avocado pit stem, he came over to ask if we wanted dessert, not telling us he was in fact the mngr, then disappeared and returned to offer 20% off of the entire bill because apparently comping us for the salad when it had inedible and dangerous chunky avocado parts weren’t enough for him to take off the full price. As for the entire dinner, my husband’s dish was just okay (eggplant parm) and nothing special that should have cost as much as it did. The tables are one on-top of each other with either picnic table settings so you must share your seating with strangers unless you are a large party, or sit as we did at tiny 18” by 18” tables that aren’t big enough to accommodate the plates and water and/or wine bottle (which the server placed under our able). If you’re vegetarians, as we are, take your appetite and money to any other local establishment that has good management, good-safe preparation and reasonable prices. (To compare, we recently found an olive pit in our spinach olive pizza but ate most of the pie and the manager still insisted on coming over personally to apologize and comp our entire dinner. We return to this...

I was out walking around in the rain going to some of my local accounts and stopped in here on a whim because the pictures of their sandwiches looked really good! I was sat and was given a menu with no sandwiches on it.... the menu didn't say "dinner menu" anywhere on it, so I had no clue they had a lunch menu until after I ordered gnocchi with pesto and a side of broccoli rabe. Then I overheard the table next to me, who was given my same menu that I just had, asked for a lunch menu. I was taken back and pretty disappointed that I'm now missing out on these sandwiches. The server never even mentioned anything to me or apologized for giving me the wrong menu. My food came out, the gnocchi was delicious and very well made, the pesto on the hand was watery and bland. The broccoli rabe was very well cooked and seasoned. Throughout my short dining experience the server kept removing things from my table very promptly... too promptly. Not very many tables here, so maybe they are trained this way so that guests don't stay too long, so I let that slide. I then overheard that the server also gave the wrong soup of the day to the table next to me. I've ran and operated many restaurants and bars in my time and something was off here. I don't know if the server was just having a bad day or if they are normally this incompetent, but if they were working for me at one of my establishments I would be having a serious conversation with them. I dug the vibe here though, so I'll be giving them one more chance and coming back for one of those sandwiches sometime soon, hopefully I'll be given the correct menu the next...