Toscana's Ristorante — Restaurant in Peabody

I thought it was a pleasant find! It's located next to Karl's Sausage so you can pick up some goodies while you're here. There definitely isn't much to the exterior or very much the interior, but it didn't bother me much. We sat in the bar area so it was very comfortable. Service was wonderful from start to finish.

We ordered the fried calamari for a starter. The batter was very light though lacking in seasoning, but it was cooked perfectly. Calamari has a tendency to be overcooked. The cherry peppers were hot but tasty. A squeeze of lemon over the dish made up for the lack of seasoning in the batter.

Taking up the Andelman brothers' recommendation for entrees, my fiance ordered the Bistecca alla Toscana. For a non-steakhouse, it was the most tender and flavorful steak I've had in the longest time. For a sirloin stuffed with stuff, I was very surprised. It was so good! The steak would have just been perfect on it's own.

My friend ordered the Grilled Veal Tower with a side of gnocchi with pesto sauce. Very flavorful and the gnocchi was soft and pillow-y. Pesto sauce looked heavy but it worked with the gnocchi very well.

The Andelman brothers also suggested the bolognese and I'm usually a sucker for it, but I was craving something different. I ordered the Vongole e Cozze and substituted the clams for haddock (I'm allergic to clams) with a white wine sauce. They made the swap but there was a $3 upcharge. When the dish came, it was humongous! The center of the plate was a mound of pasta with the sauce, topped with 2 large fillets of haddock and two mussels out of the shell, and surrounded by what seemed like an appetizer+ amount of mussels. Even the waitress was surprised at the amount of seafood I got. The linguine was cooked al dente and the sauce was not watery at all nor was the plate swimming in it. The mussels picked up the sauce flavor and the haddock was lightly pan seared. Definitely taste the freshness of the seafood. It probably could have used a little more salt but hey, gotta keep the sodium levels in check! I love pasta cooked al dente, but in this case, I would have preferred it cooked a little more to soak in more of the sauce. Definitely worth the $3 upcharge!

They have a great variety of desserts. They all sounded awesome. The Andelman brothers' recommended the tiramisu, but we couldn't resist the creme brulee cheesecake. When it came out, we were disappointed to see it didn't have the crackling sugar top but at least it was very good. Our other choice would have been the lemonade inspired lemon meyer cake.

The portions were large but the food was delicious. I thought the pricing was on par with the quality and...

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How Toscana's ruined my wife's baby shower and birthday

My wife loves Toscana's food so much that she wanted to celebrate two important events there: her birthday and our first child's baby shower. We booked their 3 Bourbon Street location MONTHS in advance for the shower and decided to go there for her birthday as well, just a couple of weeks before the big day. Little did we know, we were in for a disaster.

On her birthday, we casually checked in at the front desk about the shower, since we had emailed and called them several times with no response. They told us that the person we were planning with had left the company and that we should call back to confirm the details. We were a bit worried, but we trusted them and enjoyed our meal.

The next week, my wife called them to put down a deposit and picked out the food for the shower. Everything seemed fine. We were all set for 11/5 at 1 pm at their 3 Bourbon Street location. Or so we thought.

On the day of the shower, we got a call from our balloon person saying that there was no party at that location. We panicked. We had 50+ people on their way to the wrong place. We called Toscana's and they put us on hold while they tried to figure out what happened. Meanwhile, we called their other location, Toscana Forno, and found out that they had set up the party there instead. How could they do this to us?

We had no choice but to rush to the other location, which was 15 minutes away, and hope that our guests would follow us. Thankfully, they did, and we managed to have a decent time. But the food was not as good as the original Toscana's. They messed up the chicken broccoli ziti dish. It was supposed to be Alfredo sauce, but it was the butter and oil instead. Forno does have good pizza. I will give them that.

They only gave us a $200 credit for their mistake, which was a joke. They ruined our special day, and we had to deal with the stress and embarrassment of changing locations at the last minute. We were not happy. It's going to be a long time before we go back to any of their locations. Great food for the most part, but their service...

Tonight was my first and last experience with this establishment. I placed an order by phone for pickup at 8:30 this evening. The woman who answered was very hard to hear and in turn had a hard time hearing me. At the beginning of the order she asked for my name and number so that she could call me when the order was ready. I do not have a local number so I intentionally cited it slowly and concisely. Because it was difficult to hear, I was clear to ask she repeat the number back to ensure it was taken correctly; she recited it correctly and said I would receive a call in 20-25 mins to come pick up my order. When 40 mins had passed and still no call I drove over to find my number had been entered on the ticket wrong and my order had been sitting for about 25 mins on a rack. I had asked for the food to be reheated or remade since this was their error at which time she went and got her manager. The manager never introduced himself or apologized. He didn't offer to provide a discount for the inconvenience or even comp the meal. My order consisted of an appetizer and 2 dinners; fried calamari, grilled steak tips and veal parmigiana. The calamari looked to be a quarter of a usual order, the steak tips were supposed to come with fries but did not. When entering the restaurant they have a cold case with packaged desserts; I added one to the bill and he never offered to comp that for the misunderstanding either. I don't typically look for freebies but having work in customer service as a manager and presented with a mistake I've always been taught you should try to make it right and extend a good faith gesture as an apology. Also, I would note having the host/hostess be the one taking phone orders at the front of the restaurant while leaving the front door open to the road noise, guest on the patio and guest walking back and forth inside is probably not the best place to make sure orders, customer names and numbers are...