Lattanzi Cucina Italiana — Restaurant in New York

I made this dinner reservation couple of weeks in advance to celebrate dear friend’s 55th birthday. I specifically noted in my reservation that it was for a special occasion and that we would prefer to be seated in the back atrium room. When we arrived at 5pm on December 15th, I was told there were no tables available in the atrium and had to be seated upstairs. Our waiter was not particularly refined nor was he attentive as one would expect from a fine dining establishment. As we were approaching the end of our dinner meal, I reminded our waiter that we are celebrating my friend’s birthday and if he could kindly do something special for this occasion. The waiter promised that a mariachi group will come with a special dessert to wish my friend Happy Birthday. I was little surprised that the waiter promised mariachi since Lattanzi is an Italian restaurant but any type of special attention to surprise my friend would have been of course appreciated so I did not object. We ordered our dessert after dinner, dessert came, we finished the dessert and then I got the check without any special celebration to surprise my friend! Not even a Happy Birthday wish from the waiter or piece of crumb with candle! Even the most casual chain restaurants like Chili’s manage to get such a routine request right without exception! When I complained to the floor manager/ head waiter as we were leaving he just said sorry without showing any genuine concern or sympathy. I was extremely disappointed and also embarrassed for my guests by such lack of service. To top it all off, my wife ordered a salmon dish for her main entree that got her violently sick! She ended up running to the bathroom with diarrhea for rest of the night completely ruining our after dinner plans! Clearly the salmon was not fresh, not stored/refrigerated properly and it was contaminated with bacteria. We were at Lettanzi once before about a year ago with another couple and our experience was much better that time. This is why we decided to go back. I seriously doubt we will ever be back again. The entire experience last Saturday was simply atrocious at every level and well below any...

I’ve never felt so rushed at dinner! So much for Italian hospitality. This place is clearly going for upscale, authentic Italian dishes, and on some fronts it achieves that. I was able to get the only true carbonara I’ve ever had outside my home, the salad was tasty (if oily), and my kid’s tomato sauce was very nice.

But. Well, this is one of those many Italian places that was probably fancy and amazing in the 90s, but has barely changed since then. The decor seemed old, the waitstaff was an all-male parade of stiff suits, you get the idea. All of which would be fine if they just replaced the stained menu pages and straightened the pictures on the wall. The real problem was that we walked in at 5:40, ahead of our reservation time, and walked out at 6:40. We were not trying to rush; in fact we were looking to a nice leisurely meal. But our server came to take our order at least three times while our noses were clearly still buried in our menus, every couple minutes. I almost dragged everyone out then, because I was feeling rushed before even ordering food.

We ordered our salads to come after our mains, which is an older but known tradition in Italy and a great way to eat. I’ve never had any server even bat an eye at this request but our server here clearly thought it was confusing and funny.

Food came out so fast we were almost surprised it was cooked through, and while pasta doesn’t take long (and two of our three pastas were nicely al dente), the speed felt almost aggressive. This speed continued, as someone asked to take our plates the second our forks went down. Our second courses arrived as our child was still eating his first! They very obviously could not get us out of there fast enough.

And then they dropped dessert menus, and came back a minute later to take our dessert order. We said no thanks just the check. We’d been looking forward to dessert, but since we so clearly needed to finish quickly, we obliged.

All in all I’d rate this place a 3/4 on food, and a...

Disgraceful!

This restaurant is located in the theater district, very near Times Square; super busy area of town. We booked our reservation for 9:30 pm, right after our show. We got to the restaurant at 9:35 and the front door was locked; through the windows we could see all tables were set with lit candles and restaurant lights were on; it looked open but oddly there were no dinner guests. None. We knocked until a lady finally came to the door, to whom we explained that we had reservations and asked if they were open. The lady did not let us in and asked us to wait outside in the cold while she went to get the manager. Manager showed up annoyed and looked at his watch and said we were 10 mins late. We explained that we had been waiting outside the restaurant for 5 minutes waiting for someone to open because the door was locked, and according to their hours, they closed at 10pm and they had granted us a reservation at 9:30 pm. To which he rudely responded "well, if you wanna eat, come in and eat!" Wow. Needless to say we no longer wished to stay and be served at this disgraceful establishment and risk them spit on our food. The fact that it was utterly empty at 9:30 pm in such a busy area of town should have given us an idea of what a poor restaurant it is. We walked to Bicce, the restaurant next door and had a...