Italia — Restaurant in Punta Gorda

I made reservations for a party of 14. We were seated in the private room with 2 other small parties, different server. Our table was setup for 12 people. It took a while for the server to take our drink order. She had other tables in a different section to serve. It took 1 1/2 hour before we got our food. My grandkids were hungry. Two of the personalized pizzas were under cooked and at that point my Grandsons were so hungry that they ate what they could so the rest was garbage. The eggplant Parmigiana had over kill of sauce and the sauce was very sweet. My Chicken picata was salty. Trying to get our server to come refill our drinks was a challenge. When I called to make reservations I asked if I can bring a birthday cake as we were celebrating my Mom's 84th birthday. I was going to cut the cake myself but our server insisted on doing so. I brought my own paper plates and plastic fork so we wouldn't need to use the restaurant. We told our server that the 2 pizzas were undercooked. We get our bill and there was a $10.00 cake cutting fee and only 1 pizza discounted half price. This was supposed to be a positive experience as my Mom was diagnosed with stage 4 glioblastoma and we wanted the family to be together to have a positive experience. $507.65 after and extremely disappointing with the entire experience. Italia will never get my business again. My recommendation to them is to have someone assist the server with large parties..when companies skimp on staff, they...

Went here December 8th for the first time with friends. Had a delicious dinner (was one of the chef's special) which had shrimp and Italian sausage. Service was good. We then went back on December 29th. We had the lasagna roll (which was dry and we assumed that was because it was missing the cheese but we didn't complain). Our guest had the shrimp scampi and said it was good. We also ordered the side salads. The menu indicated the salads were $2.99. However when the bill arrived we were charged $4.50. When we asked our waitress why she replied "we had a price increase". I then asked her why wasn't the menu updated to reflect the increase and she said she would ask the manager and let me know. She came back and replied that it was missed on the menu and the manager told her there was nothing they could do as they didn't know how to correct the bill. Never experienced anything like this. When leaving I did have a chat with the manager and said you need to let your customers know as this is not right and he said he just told all his waiters to advise customers. Really? We will...

Where to even begin? The place was open later for New Years Eve. The atmosphere, very settling for the restaurant. The staff all very friendly. The bread and oil they provide tasteful and wonderfully crunchy and soft. But truly, the real reason for this review, I love chicken franchese but it’s not on the menu.. I was fully dedicated to ordering something else on their menu but my boyfriend put a thought in my idea of asking if they could maybe make it for me, what’s the worse they could say? No.. I have to order what I already was going to order. But they let me know that the chef will gladly make it for me and my daughter. Made from scratch, sauce from scratch. I cannot thank the chef, the waiter and the owner enough for making this dinning experience amazing....