Gina Maria's Pizzeria — Restaurant in Placentia

Food was good. Not great, but good. My pasta was salty, overly buttered, and extremely heavy on the garlic. The salad was just iceberg lettuce with a couple tomato chunks. The garlic bread was like a butter sponge.

Service was terrible. We walked in and stood in the front. One employee walked by us three times and didn’t acknowledge our existence. There were two large parties already seated—the larger one had eaten already, and smaller one had ordered but not received food yet. A total of probably 25 people between two servers. We were a party of two. The employee who ignored us turned out to be our server. You would have thought there were 200 people dining, as it took about ten minutes to place our order. Then after we ordered, it was another 25 minutes to receive our food—two bowls of pasta. No word from our server, no check-in. Even after the food came, we never saw our server. She did awkwardly yell at the party next to us—twice. She thought the kids were shooting spit balls. We were right next to them, and didn’t see anything. Then she was walking around with her cell phone taking pics of the other two parties. She didn’t tell them why until after—she wanted to post the pics on her Facebook page (I hope she meant the restaurant’s page). Then she came by! ...ten minutes after we’d finished eating. We thought she might ask if we were enjoying our food or if we wanted refills or take-out boxes. Nope, she told us she was going home and someone else would be our server. That was it. She didn’t even drop the check. We had to go to the front to close...

POC REVIEW: First time here tonight. I was so excited to go out with my niece who was in town from out of state. Our server was very passive aggressive from the beginning. She was genuinely bothered we were there. I'm not saying she was racist. I'm saying she definitely had something going on in her personal life to take out her frustration out on us. Staff does not wear name tags or have their name on the receipt.

She was maybe in her 20s, caucasian, light brown hair in a French braid, slightly tan. She was annoyed when we asked for red paper flakes, she was annoyed when I asked for ranch, she was annoyed when we asked where our appetizers were, she was annoyed when I asked for the check, she was annoyed when I asked for change back (total was $26, gave $40, AND I TIPPED STILL because I believe in tipping servers.) She occasionally switched up her attitude and brought out our food nicely.

Overall, add a strange encounter from the beginning when we walked in. My niece and I are darker skinned and there was about 4 white families that turned when we walked in and it was so awkward. We felt watched the entire dinner. That's why I asked if we could sit outside, and in the end I wanted out check as soon as possible because I just wanted to get the hell out of there. They are not racist, that is not what I'm saying. But my experience as a person of color was odd. Food was fire though, VERY...

Have been a customer for 20+ years and since Catherine has semi-retired the quality of the service and their end products have dropped significantly. I know those just trying it for the first time review it high because the quality of the food products is high, especially Catherine's sauce. It is the best I have had in CA. Unfortunately a lot of the other experiences are not that good. The last pizza we got took an hour for them to prepare and when we got it home it looked like a 6 yr old sliced it with a chainsaw (not an exaggeration). On other occasions on take out dinner orders our food was cold and the salads actually had ice in it. The new relatives running are nice enough but do not seem like they are business oriented and are struggling to keep the customer experience high as it used to be. I have been waiting for my order and a number of times seen people get up and leave due time waiting to be served and the staff did nothing to stop them and try to keep them from leaving. The remodeling is fine and they now deliver is all well and good but if the customer experience suffers, doesn't seem worth it. This all too bad I still say the food is still the best Italian around. Hopefully the recipes will not change because then there won't be any reason left...