Ciao Bella NSB Italian Restaurant - Pizzeria, Seafood, Steak, Martini and Wine Bar — Restaurant in New Smyrna Beach

I don’t even know how to start. We visited here last night for the second time to give it another chance, as we weren’t too thrilled our first time there 6 months ago. I ordered Veal Piccata and my husband had a seafood dish over pasta. Now I’m not used to having oily greasy food in a specialty restaurant and thought this time might be different. I ate about half the meal and could not go on. And after talking to the chef, he said he would have remade the meal if it was not to my liking. Well not only did our server not ask about how the meal was, but the chef was standing right next to me at the bar where we were eating, and didn’t ask us anything either until after half the meal, my husband told me that I should tell the chef about the oiliness of the meal, and I did so prefacing my conversation with the word “respectfully”, saying to him, “chef this is way too full of butter and oil.” It was only then, that he offered to remake our meals. Then, my husband wrote his review, which the chef did not appreciate and even wrongly addressed it to me, saying that he also looked up previous reviews of restaurants we had bad experiences in.Not all restaurants are great.I thought this forum was for reviews, but I guess it’s only for good reviews. The chef asked that I take down the previous review. Well… no. We have every right to do a review. The food was not to our liking, no one even asked us if it was to our liking, and we did NOT finish our meals. As a matter of fact we went home with upset stomachs from too much oil and butter and could see this was going to happen if we did eat it all. The chef, in asking us to take down the review, also said that the issue of the food did not come up till it was time to settle the bill. The bill NEVER came into question, as a matter of fact we couldn’t believe they didn’t take anything off as a courtesy for not having a good experience. We just paid the bill, shook our heads and left vowing to never...

We arrived at 845 without a reservation and were seated promptly by 850pm. It was very busy and VERY loud. We sat at a table for two and it was difficult to talk. We noticed not many people were eating as there were several large, loud groups. We ordered drinks with our server in training and I asked what beers they had and she had to go look. We are regulars at The Garlic so we were anxious to see how Ciao Bella would stack up. As we ordered our food the server advised us that they were very busy with the large groups and our food might be an extra few minutes. Oh my. Now we knew why many weren’t eating. I ordered the lasagna and the Mrs ordered the Grouper in red sauce. The portion of the lasagna was disappointingly small. Approximately 3”x 3” square in a large bowl. Despite being warned it would take a while and comp’ed our drinks, the food came pretty quickly. I was used the giant lasagna from The Garlic which they advertise is 24 oz? Anyhow it tasted good but we were never offered any cheese toppings for our dishes which is typical for an Italian restaurant. The grouper filet was a bit dry from over cooking but was flavorful and was a good size portion. Great customer service but very loud. Maybe if there weren’t large groups screaming to talk to people seat 20 feet away it would have been...

Positives!!!! The Saxman was great! Live music is a plus, especially on a Tuesday night!thank you !! (Must be Ladies night(Tuesday?), my entree was half off,idk) The place is recently remodeled, clean, welcoming atmosphere . We sat Al fresco at the outside bar, looking in.nice vibes. We were greeted and served by 2 sweet ladies who appeared to be working the whole room. They worked great as a team, but they were spread too thin to provide the quality of service I'm sure they're used to providing.... Negatives: no bread?no salad?no salt or pepper?No 2 minute check back? I'm pretty sure it's a sacrilege to serve Italian without these important components..while I noticed the menu made no mention of the entrees including them, , maybe if the staff wasn't overwhelmed, they would have had the time to upsell a salad or bread. I would have paid extra for bread or garlic rolls if I knew I wasn't getting any, again, the staff didn't have time to interact with their guests. As a local, I felt TERRIBLE eating clams that were so tiny they surely would have fell thru my clam rake if I were to harvest them from the IRL myself.. sadface My dining partner had chicken parm. Average. I like to see a floor manager picking up the slack and helping the staff.i don't see that here, and it shows. Just...