IL GABBIANO — Restaurant in New Haven

WORST DINING EXPERIENCE OF OUR LIVES!! Short version: No parking, abysmally long wait times, served ALREADY CHEWED FOOD, poor management. My husband and I made a dinner reservation for 7pm on a Friday night. The parking lot was completely full so we ended up having to park a 1/2 mile away and walk to the restaurant (which was fine - we get that it could be extra busy on a Friday night). We had called the restaurant when we couldn’t find parking and let them know that we were running a few minutes behind schedule. They said that it would be fine. Spoiler alert: It wasn’t. Once inside we waited a total of 45 minutes to be seated. During that time, the hostess told us two separate times that a table was ready for us only to turn right around and tell us “Sorry, you’ll have to wait even longer.” When we FINALLY got seated, our waiter didn’t come to the table for another 20 minutes. No checking in, no water, no bread, just more waiting for us. After that time, someone came to the table with bread and a bowl of olives. It was only just a few minutes later that we realized that the bowl of olives that they had given us had an ALREADY CHEWED OLIVE PIT IN IT!! UGH!! 🤢 On top of that, the bread that they had given us was completely stale and there was no butter or olive oil anywhere in sight. We sent it all back and were promised new bread and olives - they never came. We get that restaurant’s get busy - I, myself, have waited tables for 8+ years and have NEVER encountered such an overall awful experience. It got to the point where I asked to speak to the manager because things were getting ludicrous! I ended up having to ask 3 separate times to talk to him and when he finally showed up, he looked in our direction, made eye contact and then turned around and walked away - never to return again. It was completely disrespectful and total a slap in the face!! All in all, we were there for more than 1 hour and 40 minutes and never got a bite to eat. We were very excited to try this new restaurant so we realllly tried to give them the benefit of the doubt but the experience just kept getting worse and worse. The biggest bummer of it all is that this was supposed to be a rare date night for us. We have a little one at home so we had to hire a sitter only to come home two hours later still hungry…we ended up ordering takeout. For all the parents of littles out there - GO SOMEWHERE ELSE!! This joint is really not worth your...

We had dinner here last night, the first time here. We made reservations for 7:30p for outdoor seating. We arrived 15 minutes early. There was a young hostess behind the counter and 4 elderly patrons waiting patiently to be seated. We stood behind the party for more than 10 minutes and at no point did the hostess even make eye contact, acknowledge our presence or motion that she would be right with us. The first party was seated and a young man came to the hostess station and said someone would be right with us. The young lady returned and we overheard that she had just fallen. Okay this was terrible and I could see she was shaken, and slight tears in her eyes. She led us to our table and I could could only wonder where the manager was to tend to this young lady and the waiting guests. The waitress took our order, we were excited that they offered a special of mozzarella stuffed squash blossoms. We also ordered a large special salad and an oyster app. She must have asked us 3 times if the Oyster and the salad were to be our entrees. We told her that we would like them all to come first, and we would choose our dinners. All the apps came, the squash blossoms were thickly coated in oil soaked batter and were inedible. We were not asked once how everything was. Someone cleared out apps and we didn't see the waitress come back. A young man walked past and approached our table, I told him we would like to order our entrees! He took our dinner order. Still not sure where our server was. My dinner was sub par at best, I ordered a NY strip, how hard can that be? My friend ordered a chicken dish and it came with 6 chicken legs drenched in an oily sauce! 6 chicken legs for a $45 plate? where was any of the other parts of the chicken? Mind you this was a Tuesday night and the restaurant was not even the slightest busy.I think we saw our waitress one other time after being served. We didn't dare give them the opportunity to mess up a dessert order. I sat with an empty glass of water for the remainder of the meal until a young boy finally refilled my glass. Needless to say, we will not be returning. Come on IL Gabbiano, You can do better!!!! And I hope the young hostess was tended to by her vacant...

We were quite excited to try this place and were disappointed. To start off, there was an event across the way ( I understand this is not their fault, but it should definitely be noted). We were reserved to sit outside but opted to sit inside because the music at the event was obnoxiously loud. It was the Playlist event at canal boat house, so anyone looking to go around the time of this event should make note not to go. You cannot hear yourself think outside, and it was upsetting considering it was a beautiful evening and would have been nice to sit outside. Overall, the food was fine. It was not horrible, but I've definitely had better seafood at other waterside restaurants in New Haven. We had the mussels to start, which were pretty good. We enjoyed the sauce they came in. We were not given bread to start off with, which we saw other tables receive as they sat down. When we were given bread, we were not given the olive oil the other tables were. My husband had the pasta dish with shrimp and calamari and egg style noodles. The shrimp was overcooked. I had the seafood pasta and had the same issue with the shrimp. The white sauce it came with was quite flavorless. However, the clams and mussels were good. My husband enjoyed his expresso martini, but my French 75 had too much lemon (if you read my other reviews you will know I'm usually not that fussy). We then waited a ridiculously long time for dessert (chocolate lava cake). Service honestly could have been so much better. We were seated at the exact same time as another couple and ordered the exact same amount of food, and they left over half an hour before we even got our check. 3 groups around us had the same waiter, but we randomly had a different one, and felt like he was running around the whole restaurant and honestly kept forgetting about us. One huge thing this restaurant should work on is how they assign waiters to tables. Why did we have a random waiter on our side when he had to sprint around the whole place? But the waiter serving the other tables near us was present and barely moved past a medium walk speed. Overall, based on this experience, I would...