Maria's Old Town 21 — Restaurant in Petersburg

If you don't mind large "service" dogs being present inside the restaurant...2 feet from my table jumping around at the site of our food and whining throughout dinner...then this is the place for you. We were appalled that a dog was allowed into a fine dining establishment and even worse that the staff didn't take into consideration their guests experience. My husband and I on this Valentine's Day, were looking forward to a nice, relaxing dinner and it turned into a very stressful one. The dog kept backing up so its rear end was right next to me. It was jumping around at the site of our food and whined continuously throughout dinner. It clearly was not a service animal. Many other patrons were staring and talking about this dog....we felt like we were at a circus. To accommodate one person at the expense of the rest of the patron's experience is not right. Furthermore, the service was terrible. My drink special tasted like strawberry syrup. Our waitress said the bartender made my husband's drink but that she made mine and "wasn't sure how it turned out." Really? You hope my $11.50 drink tastes OK? We were served crab dip with no spoon. When we asked for a spoon it took the waitress 15 min to bring one. She kept walking past our table taking orders and drinks to others and never bothered to bring the spoon. One time she passed us and said, "I'll get that spoon for you" so we knew she didn't forget. The same thing happened with our check...we asked for our check and 15 min later had to ask another person. He told our waitress and another 5 min later we finally got our check. We were never offered refills on our drinks and they were empty 1/2 way through our meal. I should mention, we arrived very early (first people to arrive) and it was not busy at the time. In comparison to other italian restaurants, the food was bland. I had chicken piccata and my husband had spaghetti and meatballs. The meatballs tasted like they were not homemade. Crab dip was fishy smelling and bland.

Owners: Although we appreciate your apology and that you will address these concerns for future patrons (in your response below), we expected that you would make things right with us due to the numerous problems we encountered and the fact that our evening was pretty horrible. This isn't just a minor complaint about a service or food issue....we literally had to deal with a whining, jumping, panting dog sitting next to our table. For future reference, you may want to compensate patrons for the money spent on an evening that did...

I'll start that the food was pretty good. I had bruschetta, the seafood ravioli, tiramasu and a cappuccino. A little too much sauce but otherwise not bad. What was not pleasant was the overwhelming smell of Fabuloso cleaner. I asked to sit somewhere else versus the bar area where it was worse. We almost left before ordering it was so strong. I mentioned it to the server who said they wiped the menus with it. I double checked the menus before I make this next comment, but 20% gratuity was added to the bill and we were a party of 2, not 6 which is what the menus say gratuity is automatically added. The food and service was not 20% worthy. I do tip. I was a server in my 20s. Service has to be bad, really bad, and I would have needed to have spoken to someone before I ever tipped less than 10%. But I did not like there being no choice on the tip at all. I wish I could rave more but the Fabuloso and forced tip turned me off from coming back.

UPDATE: I apologize for missing the note at the front of the restaurant regarding gratuity added to all bills regardless of the size of the party. Since that was my error and my main issue, I added a star. The food was good and more or less sauce really wasn't an issue. The server was sweet and I wasn't unhappy with their service. Please don't think the server provided poor service at all. It was that there was no choice in tip with what I thought was no notice of it (missing the note at the front). I can give you all another try buy I may have to wait a bit as the Fabuloso is strong everywhere (the host did move us to the piazza area). Keeping the germs of the pandemic under control is important and I respect that, that may mean me waiting a bit before trying again. Thank you for responding and providing information to me. I'm happy to update my review due to an...

This place is the equivalent of Chef boyardee. It honestly blows my mind that it was recommended by a now Ex friend.

I will say the service was mediocre, they were okay, not great but pretty good, about as good as I knew it would be. Everyone was very friendly, almost like they were expecting to be audited but just not great at their jobs

The food however awful; edible as it may have been, I could only describe it as an artists rendering of what Italian food should be, had they never eaten Italian food. I started out with the oysters but they were stuck to the shells and covered with spinach and cheese. Although tasty for $25 I want to taste actual oyster. I followed up with the Sicilian spaghetti, and my wife had the seafood ravioli. Everything was bland and disrespectful to the name.

with the salad, at $100 for a dinner for two having the salad come out in plastic containers almost unbelievable. The rolls obviously from Walmart and you have to ask for literally everything.

Honestly at then end of it all I feel as if I should have been paid for my time, getting slapped with a $100 bill is plain disrespectful. If I have ever seen a business in the market to make money this is the place the mark up is over the top. I kept constantly thinking to myself, “is this a fricking sitcom” it was comical at how awful it was. Expectations drastically not met.

I only gave it 2 stars because the staff was nice and the interior was really cool, like...