Roman Delight of Fountainville — Restaurant in New Britain Township

Alright I’ve got a lot to un-pack so sit back, Me and my family arrived at 6:30 on 3/21/21 to enjoy a family dinner after a long, gorgeous hike at Peace Valley. As soon as we arrive the hostess immediately starts giving us an attitude and tells us that’s it’s going to be at least an hour wait, even though I look around and notice multiple open booths I ask her “even if we sit separately?” to which she coldly replies yes. Seeing as we has a large group +10 people and no reservation I was expecting something like to happen and the only reason we ended up waiting the hour was because my parents had apparently eaten here before and highly recommended it, doing their best to convince everyone to stay, not an easy task. So we return at 7:30 exactly 1 hour later just like she says to find the restaurant almost completely empty and deserted. The hostess then tells us it’ll be another 10-15 minutes because they have to clean our tables, which is fine but then tells us we can’t sit together because of COVID-19. It’s a reasonable request and I understand why, but then they she should have told us that in the beginning and what was the point of waiting the hour then if we were all gonna sit at separate tables anyway? The waiter then comes out, she was very nice actually, and tells us all that we have to put all of our orders in within 15 minutes because the kitchen is closing at 8 pm, the restaurant and sign says they close at 10 o clock. The hostess should’ve told us that in the beginning but fine, not a big deal so we put our orders in quickly, Roman Delight then proceeds to serve us the hardest bread and garlic knots I’ve ever had, I’m talking about so hard that I could use them as a weapon. However being the bread lover that I am I eat it anyway and ask for another tray of bread which takes them almost til the end of the meal to bring out. Amazingly enough, it’s even worse than before with bread that is not only hard but also STALE this time as well, I doubt people from the French Revolution would even touch it. Afterwards, they then accidentally forget about my order(Chicken Parm),then accidentally make it TO-GO, and then they put it back on a plate and reheat in the oven (I could tell as the chicken Soggy and wet and the plate was burning hot), all while I’m watching everyone else eat and filling up and Stale bread mind you. Now I’ve had a lot of chicken parm’s in my life and it’s normally my Go-To because it’s pretty hard to mess up and I not saying that it was the worst I’ve ever had, but it was up there. If it’s any consolation everyone else seemed to be disappointed as well. All in all, we spend about 400$ that night which is about average for us all, for some very below average food. As we’re about to leave I ask the waitress why they closed the kitchen so early and she says it was because they had to perform a deep cleaning and so that was the reason, not sure if I believe them but hey at least she had a response unlike our hostess. The only thing that saves this from being a 1-star review is the pizza, as it was actually pretty good.

P.S We are not picky eaters my parents and grandparents lived through a war, concentration camps, Refugee camps, Etc... so they know what it’s like to starve, not waste, and just eat anything to survive. That being said I don’t think anyone is going to eat their leftovers they were probably just taking it home for their dogs.

Damn , not even an copy and pasted generic response? You guys are really...

The food was food but I was so upset by the time it arrived that I couldn't tell you if it was good or bad. What I can tell you is this was the worst experience that I have had in a restaurant in a very long time. We were part of a large group on an outing that had arranged this visit well ahead of time. From the outset of our visit it was very clear that the hostess was either upset with our group or was just out of her depth. For whatever reason myself and the 7 people with me at our table were mistreated. We watched as other customers arrived, received drinks, ordered their food, received their food and left while we waited 80 minutes for our food. When we asked why we were ignored we were told to wait our turn by a waitress, who was not our waitress, and received an answer of "OK" repeatedly from the hostess. At one point approximately 50 minutes in, at that point we were watching others who had arrived well after us eating their food while we hadn't ordered yet, I asked the hostess point blank if myself or people at my table had done something to upset her or her staff. I was told that the waitress would be over and "see she is right there". I really try to not assume malice where incompetence can explain things, but I know that they didn't forget about us, so I think that they ignored us. It was a lousy time in an otherwise great day.

I forget to mention that the hostess took our drink orders after we had been sitting 20 minutes and we asked if we could order food and she told us no, I'm the Hostess, not your server. Such poor customer service, it was abysmal. I still gave the waitress a decent tip, 25+% because I'm not an bad customer, but I was definitely...

Consistently good food and competent servers, but I have to ask about the one-tomato-salad. Months ago, we ordered a pasta entree which came with a side salad. The salad arrived with lettuce, two slices of cucumbers and a single cherry tomato sitting on top of it all. Really? ONE tomato? We conjectured that the produce truck was delayed and that they did the best they could with what they had. We ate without further snarky remarks.

Fast forward two months later. This time, we ordered chicken parmesan with a side salad. It had been a while since we'd been to the restaurant, so we had forgotten our previous experience...until the salad was served. Again, the cherry tomato hovered on top of the lettuce as though holding court in its green kingdom! One measly cherry tomato. In tomato season! I could see a roadside stand in the near distance taunting me with it's wide variety of the precious fruit. Ripe. Fresh. Jersey Tomatoes beckoning to me. It was all just too sad. I put the salad aside and had an extra garlic knot to console myself.

Who knows what prompts a restaurant to cut back on their produce. Maybe they're staving off bankruptcy and can't afford more vegetables? Maybe the wait staff eats from the salad bar and leaves precious little for the customer salads? Or maybe someone simply likes the look of a single, lonely little tomato on a plateful of greens? Whatever the case, I now carry a Tupperware container in my purse filled with onions, peppers and cherry tomatoes...just in case we stop at Roman...