Rosebud Naperville — Restaurant in Naperville

Disappointing. We went to Rosebuds in Naperville around 1:30pm. Sadly there were not many customers. Since the pandemic we have not fully recovered economically.

I think people are unfortunately staying away from restaurants for two reasons. Firstly, people have not gone back to restaurants in the same numbers post pandemic. I'm not sure if that's caused by an unreasonable Covid fear or not. Covid is over, and I urge people to return to the bars and restaurants.

Secondly, and the more likely cause for not going to restaurants is inflation. The cost of taking my wife and two kids to Rosebud was $160! And my wife and I shared a meal! The high cost of inflation is a major factor in keeping customers out of restaurants.

As I start out, I just want to say that I don't make comments out of vengeance or to be mean. I truly want our local restaurants to survive and thrive. These comments are honest feedback with the hope that Rosebud and other restaurants will use to improve their product.

It was a nice day and we sat outside. The atmosphere was excellent. The restaurant had few customers. We started out with two appetizers. One was spicy calamari. The second appetizer was an arancini.

The spicy calamari was breaded calamari in wet sauce. The calamari was so soggy that the breading was coming off. The spicy calamari was unedible. I can't believe they serve this on their menu. We mentioned to the waitress that the spicy calamari was horrible. We were not looking for a refund but one would think they'd give the kids a free ice cream or something just to make nice. Nothing of the sort was offered, and I guess they didn't care we felt the spicy calamari was bad. I'd rate the spicy calamari as a 1 out of five star rating.

The second appetizer was an arancini. It was described as a meatball with rice and cheese served with marinara sauce. It wasn't quite as bad as the spicy calamari but it wasn't good. I'd rate the arancini as a 2 out of 5 star.

My son order a $43 steak as medium. The cook of the steak was more to the well side. We asked for steak sauce and was told they don't have steak sauce. The steak was average.

My wife and I split a salad. The salad was quite large. I don't know how one person could ever eat this salad. The salad was fine with no complaints. However, I will say it would be hard to scr*w up a salad.

The service at Redbud was slow. I'd rate the overall experience at Rosebud as 2 stars out of 5. The overall experience was quite disappointing.

I want Rosebud and other local restaurants to thrive and survive. I hope Rosebud will use the comments to turn it around and improve...

TAKE YOUR BUSINESS ELSEWHERE! Horrible service, understaffed, my girlfriend and I were essentially forgotten about. It was fairly busy but people started to leave after 15-20 min. We had an 8:30 reservation, took more than 20 min to get water & our order taken. My food & appetizer came out first, but we weren’t even given silverware yet… had to ask the host for them since our waiter was nowhere to be found. 15 min later, my girlfriend’s food came out only for it to have a HAIR in it. It was wedged deep inside the pasta, so there was no way it was my girlfriend’s. They had asked her if she wanted another entree but she had waited long enough already and we just wanted to leave at that point. Our waiter pretty much forgot about us, even though he had only two tables including us. We even observed a couple on the other side that came in after us get both of their dishes! We were trying to be understanding, given that it was busy and “understaffed”, but every other table around us were being waited on properly so it became frustrating very quickly. The only way we got his attention was by waving him down, got to the point where we had to speak to the HOST for service. To make matters worse, we heard the table of next to us saying RACIAL SLURS. As people of color, my girlfriend and I felt immediately unsafe. In all fairness, the manager refunded our entire bill because the service and experience were abysmal. He also confronted the table next to us, but honestly seemed like he justified everything they said saying he didn’t want to “cause a scene”. Given that the manager was a person of color, I’d assume he’d be less tolerant of such language. I’ve worked in the restaurant industry before and managers will usually kick people like that out. Seems like money and conformity are more important than values and the safety/comfort of people of color here. My girlfriend and I were looking forward to dining here, but after this terrible experience we will not be...

How the heck does a supposed fancy gourmet restaurant not have air conditioning but has flies all over? Stop being cheap and turn on the air so people are comfortable enough to eat and probably order more items and drinks instead of waiting to leave because it's cooler outside and less humidity. Now the flies come on! How can you have some types of traps or some bug zapper bulbs that may if you put some sconces to hide what they are to get rid of your fly problem. You can't afford an exterminator to install something like that? I see why it was the only not crowded restaurant in the area as it's more hot and humid plus has a flying insect problem that lands on people's meals. Food is low quality if you think it is fancy Italian for the money. The parmesan cheese on the table is not fresh grated and tastes like the cheap stuff you buy from the grocery store that has fillers of wood pulp. Service was okay but a little too clingy on the serving and handling as you know you are going to get a good tip if you back off so we can eat. Ice tea is not the fresh herbal tea like other restaurants so it's cheap also. The personal pizza lacking enough sauce was just like tomato paste with no other herbs or even close to an Italian pizza sauce but can or jar quality plain paste that is a base. Not made from scratch with fresh ingredients. So less than cardboard frozen pizza with the cheese and flour dough too. Not the fresh pizzeria quality. The pasta we got was alright and not worth sharing with others or enough to do that. The salad was less than Olive Garden quality and you need the fresh ground pepper as they still did not do fresh grated cheese so you are stuck with the garbage on the table. Mixed drinks are ok but they don't do anything fancy like an infusion of smoke or something if you are paying for top shelf liquor. You are just paying for the brand name here and why it's...