Da Sesto Italiano Ristorante e Vino — Restaurant in Pinellas Park

I am normally not one to write a lengthy review unless totally displeased with the service received. This is not entirely the case here at Da Sesto.

On Saturday January 20th I went to Da Sesto for the 1st time to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I was excited to try the restaurant as it has pretty good reviews. Note: we were a party 4.

So let me start by saying overall I would give the food selection I choose a solid 3 stars. There may be better tasting food and I can’t speak to the entire menu.

Our waiter was attentive, minus the fact we had to keep pouring our own water. I would expect a waiter/waitress to ensure to refill our water. I would rate him a 4.

I thought the bread was fresh. I would rate it 4 stars.

The Caesar salad was average. I was expecting homemade croutons. It came with small store-bought croutons. I would rate the salad 3 stars.

For entrée, I ordered the Linguine Pollo Aglio E Broccoli. It lacked flavor and was average in taste. I would rate these 3 stars.

Now here is where the evening went downhill. My one friend bought a small mini butter cream cake from Publix (we were a party of 4). She also brought her own napkins, plates, and utensils with a cutting knife. Immediately, a blonde hair woman with a bob, comes to our table. She does not introduce herself by name and position… Hi I am Melissa, the manager of Da Sesto. She tells us, oh I see you brought a cake. Mind you at this time, I thought they were going to tell us, “Oh, you are celebrating a birthday” let’s ensure we sing Happy Birthday to you or offer you a complimentary dessert”. No, that was not the case. The woman proceeds to tell us that they would have preferred us provide the cake upon entering the facility and that there is also a $25 cake cutting fee. She then tells us; we will have to figure something out on how to proceed with this matter. But she never came back to the table. We asked our waiter where the $25 cake cutting fee was posted but no one could provide us with that information. We basically were told it could be a public health violation keeping a cake unrefrigerated and then the restaurant is to blame. And logically, I get that. However, let’s say I did purchase a cake and provide it immediately upon entering a restaurant. The restaurant would have no idea how long that cake has been sitting out. Also, buttercream cake can stay unrefrigerated for up to three days.

If I were a manager of a restaurant with high reviews such as Da Sesto, I would have handled the situation differently. I would have said, I see you brought a birthday cake, just for future notice there is a $25 cake cutting fee and this is also posted on our menu and our website. Just wanted to make you aware for future visits. Thank you for visiting and hope you enjoyed your birthday evening with us.

I did call around after this experience to local Italian eateries and I did not encounter such a policy. I also googled, “Cake cutting fee” and see it is a thing and can average $1.50 per person, which seems reasonable if you are using a facilities plates, forks, and knives but this was not applicable in this situation as we brought our own. Of course, there is a clean up portion but that would be accounted for in the tip.

Hope the owner can update their policies to their website and menu for future restaurant patrons. It was very disappointing to start the evening in good spirits but to leave unhappy and frustrated with how we were treated on their...

We were referred to this place by a friend. I’ve since looked at their reviews and a seasoned “dine-out” person, I honestly have to clue how this place can have such a high rating.

We walked in and was greeted by a lovely hostess who sat us at the bar. Before even greeting us the bartender abruptly yelled at the hostess for not bringing menus over - this was really bizarre.

I ordered a Peroni which was flat. I didn’t say anything until I found out that immediately after my pour, the keg needed to be changed. The bartender didn’t ask if my beer was okay or not after knowing that the keg was drained, so it was at this point I mentioned it to her. She replaced it. A clear example of her lack of care or knowledge! I later learned it was both.

We ordered mussels which we’re to die for, but unfortunately we had to beg for more bed. The bartender made me feel so weird that I said “the sauce is sooo good, don’t worry about the cost we are happy to pay extra for more bread” After waiting for 5 min, I asked another lady to bring me some bread which she promptly did.

The soup then came out and it was terribly bland - zero salt! I asked for cheese hoping that would help, but when that didn’t help I asked for salt and I kindly asked her to tell the chef there was an issue with the soup so the other patrons didn’t complain.

I watched the bartender and she didn’t say a peep to the chef. Five minutes passed and the chef (the owner) came up to me and said “hey I over heard you and you’re right, there was no salt in the soup”

Our main courses came and I would say it was a massive portion of slop. After "getting into my" Cozze al Pomodoro I realized that the reason for all the pasta was to hide the fact that there was lots of frozen calamari rings but only one shrimp in the dish.

At the end of of meal I shared my feedback with the Chef (and owner) I told him I thought I would share this with him directly oppose to providing him with a crappy review. However he barely acknowledged my concerns and he took no action to make anything right.

He could have paid attention when I was politely and very quietly explaining our experience and he could have at least pretended to care but he didn't. Not an acknowledgment, not and offer of a complimentary espresso - nothing.

Sorry Chef, especially being a fellow Canadian, but your food and customer service including your lack of problem resolution skills totally suck!

As a small business owner myself Sir, I would like to provide you with three tips for you Sir.

you may want to pay a bit more attention to what’s coming out of your kitchen and also to your clients who take the time to share with you in person concerns oppose to sluffing them off

You might want to ask your other staff how they feel about that terrible bartender you had working last night. I could see that many of the girls "feared" her.

If it was your ego that wouldn't address this properly last evening, I would highly recommend trying to loose the ego. Your business is a tough business that counts on many hands. Things can go wrong very quick , however they can made be right even quicker Sir

In closing if you are interested in comping our meal of $88.81 + a 20% tip in the form of a gift card, please contact me and I will remove this review and provide the gift card to my friends who...

Tonight, on a whim, we decided to eat at Da Sesto's. No reservation, no plan, just taking a chance. We arrived between 8:30 and 9:00pm. They were still pretty busy but never blinked an eye about seating us. They seated us almost immediately. Our waitress, Donna G, was absolutely fabulous. She was polite, happy to serve us, very attentive. We never had to ask for anything as she was always right there. I cannot say enough about how happy we were with her as our server.

The food was EXCELLENT!!!! Very few restaurants serve veal, which my husband and I absolutely love. I had my Piccatta and he had his Marsala. The portions were huge. We ordered an appetizer and also had a salad which came with our meal. We had plenty of time to eat each course before the next course came. We never felt rushed to hurry up and eat and leave. The selection of wine was tremendous.

We had the escargot appetizer which was delicious. I am a huge fan of escargot and try to have it anytime I am at a restaurant that serves it. Our server was quick to bring bread so we had it with our appetizer and with our salad. The pasta is home made and definitely had that home-made flavor. The we plenty of sauce on the veal. The only critic we had was that I felt that the Piccata sauce could use a bit more lemon and my husband felt that there could have been more Marsala wine to his Marsala sauce but we BOTH agreed that we would eat the veal again. We always had our glasses full. Very quick to clear the dirty dishes off the table. You can tell that the wait staff work together as a team. Even the hostess was helping to bus tables. Everyone seem to like working there.

This was the second time that we had eaten at this restaurant and we will definitely go again. We are already planning to take our friends there. They have a lobster meal that we dying to try.

I give every aspect of the evening high marks all around. Even though the portions were large, we could not leave without dessert so we had our dessert TO GO!

The atmosphere is another plus. Although it is a small restaurant, it does not seem cluttered or crowded even when a lot of people are there. They have nice little areas that are partitioned off to provide for private eating. They have areas for larger groups. As we were leaving we asked our waitress about being able to book the alcoves or the special both and she suggested that we book a reservation as least 10 days in advance since they are coming to their busy time of year.

Yes, it is an expensive restaurant but it is well worth the price. We have eaten as several "chain" type restaurants lately and were getting very disheartened about eating out because they were pricey, the food was lackluster and the wait staff was half-heartedly doing their job. You regretted leaving any kind of tip. This restaurant clearly put us back in the mood for dining out.

Great Service Great...