Panino's North Oaks — Restaurant in North Oaks

The business owner should be asking for help from Gordon Ramsay at Kitchen Nightmares. We each ordered a dinner salad, and a Panino Wrap. We are convinced the Paninis' were made hours and hours before they were served to us, after microwaving. My "Turkey Club" had one piece of of VERY dried up turkey on one side of the sandwich. None on the other. The bacon was actually black it was so overdone. But the worst evidence of microwaving was the cheese. It tends to give off a puddle of grease when microwaved -- and the sandwich was served to me sitting in a puddle of grease. My husband's sandwich was a "cheeseburger" Panini -- with very little ground beef inside. What was inside was dried up and nasty. Looked like someone had scraped the bottom of a pan to get the last overcooked bits. Even the salads, which are hard to mess up, were not very good. They were not chilled and were served, or rather crammed, into a silly sized bowl. There was absolutely no way to eat the salad without removing it from the silly little bowl and putting it on a plate (which we did). But the salad seemed "old" and unfresh. Not something you expect when ordering a fresh salad. The service, unfortunately, matched the food quality. Waitress seemed miffed about something the very first time she approached our table. The hostess at the front of the restaurant saw us standing, awaiting a table and instead of asking "table for two?" she looked at us and said "Can I help you with something?" It was a strange way to speak to us -- and should have clued us that customer service and we now know excellence out of the kitchen was unimportant to this restaurant. When we told the waitress (who never checked back with us after delivering the sandwiches) we were super disappointed with the food, she handled the situation poorly. Offered to remove them from our Bill, but only after saying "If you tip your waitress, I will clear these off your bill". What is that? We certainly know it wasn't the waitresses fault that the food was so low quality (old or microwaved or whatever) but she didn't provide much to us in the way of "service". Seemed upset when she approached our table and irritated when we didn't immediately know what we wanted from the menu. To be urged to tip her was very inappropriate. We would encourage the restaurant owner to check his operation -- and see the lousy food coming out of the kitchen, and the surly and unfriendly staff. I'd be stunned if they don't go out of business soon, given the experience we...

I want to start out by saying the smothered burrito is delicious. I've been coming here since I was a kid and almost always order the same thing. This item has remained consistent, delicious, and the food is the only reason I'm giving this establishment two stars.

Today I think was the last straw for me. I hadn't been back for about a year because the service was so lackluster the last time I went. First impression upon walking in today was how eerily quiet it was. Having a little music on does a lot for the ambiance. I don't really want to listen to other people's conversations, nor do I really think they are there to hear mine. Maybe they forgot to turn the music on? Not sure.

After being brought to a table by someone who was either the manager or an owner, I promptly went to the bathroom while my mother and my daughter sat down. When I got back to the table, the server had not been by yet. It was a solid five more minutes before we were greeted. This was an honest measure of time, as I was sending text messages to a mutual friend of my mother's and mine. She took our drink order, brought our drinks and took our food order, and then didn't come by the table again until I was completely finished eating. I'm not a fast eater. We saw her walk by once, ten minutes after our food was delivered, to seat another table, but she exited the room a different way and we were unable to get her attention. We had to stop a busser to ask for napkins. When I was finished eating and had an empty glass, I went to find the manager/owner to request our check and inform her that we had only seen our server twice in 40 minutes. I got an "oh dear, that's not good" yet another five minutes went by before the server came to pick up my plate, offer me a refill, which I declined at that point because I just simply wanted to leave. I then had to ask for the check again. While this was going on, a table was sat next to us, and it took her almost ten minutes to greet them too. Not only did I bring the issue to the attention of the person in charge, I asked specifically for my check, and wasn't acknowledged. We got a feeble "have a nice day" from the manager/owner on our way out.

I won't be back. If you choose to go here, I can only recommend you ask for Dana, as she is the only server there we have ever had good...

Had a rough visit here—the place was nearly dead and our service was so incredibly slow! Granted, our server admitted she was newer but wouldn’t that make you try harder to be attentive? With only two tables, it still took her quite some time to visit with waters.

We placed our order all at once and got drinks, poppers, and paninos. We also mentioned that we would like to order one more panino to take home and asked to have it ready by the end of our meal. Again, it wasn’t very busy and only three customers were at the bar. Still, the wine we ordered didn’t come to our table for ten minutes!

After further waiting, our waitress came to our table with a giant paper bag of food. All of our order was packaged up to go! We explained the mistake and she quickly blamed the kitchen for not understanding. This definitely seemed like a lie. Having placed the order, wouldn’t you recognize the mistake immediately as a server and fix it before bringing it to the table? Regardless, our appetizer and meal came out all at once.

We unfortunately had to eat quickly to avoid our to go order getting cold. The poppers were lukewarm and overfilled with cream cheese. As someone who covers her bagels in cream cheese, I can’t believe it’s possible but even my cream cheese loving mother was scooping out the filling. The only saving grace of this meal was the paninos. They were incredibly warm and delicious!

We had asked for the check when the food arrived so we wouldn’t have to wait an absurd amount of time to pay our bill. Well, our server dropped it off and thanked us, saying that she was done for the day. We watched her walk over to the bar then and get herself a drink. While I understand it’s ultimately the restaurant’s decision to allow this, it struck us as highly unprofessional and rude. Worse, when we looked at our receipt to pay, it was for the other table! Thankfully, our off-the-clock waitress realized her mistake and was able to settle our bill for us.

In summary: Service was frustratingly slow, food wasn’t brought out on time or correctly, and such a thing as too much cream cheese is possible. The...