Santa Barbara Italian Cafe — Restaurant in Pearland

I gave this place a 1 star but I'd like to say that my server Kylee deserves a 5 star review on her own because she was the highlight of this visit. Now for the stuff that earned this low rating. First thing, I called early to reserve an area for 10 people between 2-2:30pm, me and my party got their at about 2:20. Upon entering no one even looked our way, I had to get the attention of a server. I let him know that I had called earlier and he was aware but just said that they got busy and no area was available for us. We had to wait for the staff to clear some tables. Once we were sat a young female server came to take our drink orders and drop off menus, she dropped off drinks and took our order so everything seemed fine but once she took our orders she didn't come check on us for the next 30 minutes. I brought my siblings and their kids here because I know they have great food and service but they disappointed me this time. Usually they bring you bread with oil while you wait in your food but not this time. At about 40 minutes of being left there by the wait staff, I got up to ask for some manager and was told that they didn't have one and the owner wasn't there either. I was getting very frustrated with this establishment and about ready to leave because my family wasn't very happy with the service up to this point and just as was going to get up to let them know I was leaving Kylee arrived and took over our table and thank god for her because she was great. She got us everything we needed and was even clever enough to check out order and wouldn't you know that the first girl had not taken our order correctly so she fixed and finally brought us our bread. The food still took a bit to come out but expected because I believe they actually make everything here. We order a total of 9 Entrees, for some reason when the food came out we were missing 4 dishes so half of us had to wait while the rest had our food. I understand it was a big order but the kitchen needs to time it so the whole order comes out at the same time. We are ordered soda but one my nieces got lemonade and after a couple of sips she noticed that there was a cockroach at the bottom of her cup. Kylee apologized and brought my niece out another drink but my niece really wasn't in the mood to eat anymore after that. Again this staff had no manager, supervisor or any kind of leadership so I had no one to complain to. Once everyone had their food I noticed that the 3 Fettuccine Alfredo dishes we ordered seemed smaller than what I'm used to. If you have been here before than you know they have huge portions but these 3 Alfredo's looked like a kids portion. Not only was the portion size not right but also the taste of the Alfredo sauce was not good at all. Almost tasted like they used bad dairy so that was almost $70 of inedible food. The meal was ruined for my mother, nephew and niece (the one with the roach in her drink). None of them had ever been here, only I had because my workplace is nearby so I come here often. I hyped this place up to them only for them to be disappointed by this terrible experience. Honestly I don't think I will ever visit this place again. Another thing that made this awful is that besides Kylee, the rest of the front of house staff seemed to not be bothered by our whole section. We were seated by the entrance and next to us was another family of 5 I think who also received horrible service until Kylee arrived to...

I attended a Mother’s Day lunch today at Santa Barbara Italian Cafe. I won’t be back. The food was just awful. The appetizer bread was very good, and I loved the chunks of garlic and fresh herbs in olive oil for dipping. The ceasar salad was disappointing. Huge leafy greens instead of crisp bites. I had literally three (yes, I counted) croutons, and the parm was merely the powdered kind. It had a bizarre sweetness to it as well. I sent back my first entree, a penne dish, because it tasted like sour wine. I don’t think the kitchen cooked it long enough for the acrid wine flavor to cook out, and I had three others at the table try it, and all of them said it should be sent back. They were VERY KIND about it, and switched it out for a chicken alfredo. The alfredo was barely palatable. It was split. The cheese and the butter were like lumpy oatmeal on the plate. The pasta was overcooked. The chicken on both dishes seemed microwaved. I tried a bite of the eggplant parm. It was bizarre. The huge steak of eggplant was entirely too large, and it made the whole thing super dried out. The breading was almost a cornmeal texture. I tried a bite of the chicken piccata. The sauce was as thin as straight up water, and was extremely lemon-heavy. The chicken wasn’t breaded at all, and was just buried under the noodles and mounds of capers. The crab risotto is not risotto as I have had it everywhere else. It seemed like Uncle Ben’s rice instead of the standard used for the dish, and it was more than a little al dente. I am completely shocked this place is so busy. The food is basic at best, and actually gross at worst.

The service was very good, but the poor guy assigned to our tables was way too overwhelmed. He was trying to cover a party of over a dozen people by himself with zero assistance. He did his best and tried very hard to be on top of everything, but even the best need help with a 12 top. This one waitress gave us some pretty nasty eye-rolls and sighs throughout the meal as the experience went on, clearly bothered by how much room we were taking up. I over heard her twice telling people waiting that once “these people” leave, they’ll clean up the tables and be able to sit them. We spent hundreds of dollars today. Sorry about it.

I will never return here or recommend this place to anyone. I would rather microwave a can of store-brand ravioli. I do hope today was just a poor example of what they intend for their customers. I left completely shocked by the lack of flavor, quality and evidence of skill in...

2 stars, because the food was okay, if somewhat expensive. The calamari was great. I also liked the shrimp. The service, however, was terrible. I am unsure who the server was (he never introduced himself), however he was a male with brownish hair covering a bit of his eyes. According to the menu, entrees should be served with a soup or salad. However, when we ordered, the server never asked us which we wanted for each dish. So, one of our party members brought it up herself. Afterward, he asked what we wanted. Maybe there was a miscommunication, but later on he only brought out 2 out of 3 soups/salad (we had 3 dishes ordered). Even then, the 1 salad and 1 soup was brought out after we got our main dishes (I observed other tables being served their soups/salads before their main dishes by the SAME SERVER. I dont even know how we only got ours after we started eating our main dishes, because we were the only ones at the restaurant for a while). We clearly also ordered fettuccine with shrimp for one of our members, but he only brought out plain fettuccine (shrimp was added on the side later after we asked). After everything was cleared, he never came back to check on us so I'm unsure if this place even gives refills for plain water. To get our check (we didn't even finish our food because we wanted to leave early since we may as well have just ordered take out if we were being treated like this) , I had to actively seek out another server to pay. At least he came to give us to-go boxes before we left (the other server told us that she'd get him to assist us lol).

Sad thing is, I remember going to this place a while ago and it was a great experience! This is why we recommended a friend to come with us. Never coming again. For how expensive it is, if you're getting service like we did, I would not recommend others to come either. 2/5, would not recommend. We regret not going to a pho...