Babbo Italian Eatery — Restaurant in Queen Creek

We had a reservation at 7pm. We were sat down at 6:56pm and took our drink order. We got bread while we waited and the bread was absolutely amazing extremely delicious. super soft and seasoned great! The restaurant was basically empty as it was Thursday night, we received our two drinks at 7:28pm (an espresso martini and a mojito) from a food runner Our server came back to our table to take our food order at 7:41pm. She then told us she would bring us some more bread while we waited for our food. She brought us more oil and vinegar almost immediately, but we had to re-ask for more bread. The restaurant was playing Cage the Elephant so that was nice. We finally received our food at 8:19pm…Half of our food was hot and the other half of us had cold plates. I assume it had been ready and just sitting there for a long time. We had to send it back to get reheated. We were given $4 off of our meal for the inconvenience of our meals being cold. Two of our pastas that were cold were the same pasta (spicy alfredo), one of them came back hot and the other came back still cold. The server comped that alfredo from our bill. The eggplant parm was really good and their meatballs are phenomenal! The spicy alfredo was pretty good, but because i was waiting an hour and a half (89 minutes) for it I wasn’t too pleased with it. It was my birthday so we got free dessert ordered at 8:32. The Zeppoli came out at 8:46pm looked and tasted AMAZING! We immediately asked for our bill. We finally got our bill at 8:55pm

We also had empty waters for the majority of the dinner and were quite parched. We had to flag down some people to get more water.

We watched another family sit down around 7:15 and they received their food at 8:49

Our server gave us some extra bread to-go when we left which was appreciated. We complained to our server about how slow the service was and how long it took for everything and if there was anything that could be done. The server told us “i’m sorry it felt that long to you”. Almost blew a gasket. wasn’t about how we felt…literally had the exact timestamps of when everything happened.

Overall food was pretty decent, but our experience here this night was one of the worst services we have ever received at a restaurant. I don’t know if this is an every night thing or if they were just super short staffed this night or what the issue was, but on this Thursday it was super super slow.

In short, should’ve gone to...

As a long time customer, you come to expect a consistent experience at restaurants you love. Unfortunately over the last year that consistency and the quality at Babbo has gone down dramatically.

Let's start with the experience as you walk in. In the past, you were greeted politely by someone, acknowledged. Today, that isn't the case. You will stand at the podium and wait until someone sees you. On our last visit, Saturday, when the person greeted us we gave them the size of our party, we have a large family. We saw an open corner booth and asked if we could be seated there. We were told that booth was reserved. They offered to seat us right behind the hostess station, and we ask them to not seat us there as it is a high traffic area and very cold when the door opens. It's right in the middle of everything. Her response was "well, you'll have to wait then". Mind you, there were at least four tables available that could seat our family comfortably. I asked if they could push two tables together (off to the side) and she told me she'd have to ask her manager if that was OK. Again it's not like they didn't have tables. There were many options. After some debate they pushed the tables together and we were seated.

We ordered dinner and waited for our food to arrive. The corner booth was still empty.

My son ordered a dish with a flatiron steak. His medium rare meat was closer to beef jerky than anything. We asked them to remake it. I ordered my favorite, Amy's Lasagne, the edges were burnt, the lasagne bone dry, lacked most of the sauce that it normally comes with. The middle of the lasagne was barely warm.

As we ate, I noticed that corner booth still sat empty.

Our server never came back to check on us, never refilled our drinks. We had to flag another server down to get extra sauce and to go boxes. I left half the lasagne on my plate, it was terrible.

The large corner booth remained empty the entire time we ate dinner.

I don't know what's going on with the Queen Creek Babbo, but they need to fix it. The customer experience used to be great and I'm not sure we'll be back...

The restaurant is very nice inside and seems very welcoming but the food was terrible and the service was the worst service I've ever experienced. We had a party of 7 and was seated quickly but we waited over 10 minutes for the waitress to acknowledge us and take our drinks. Another 10-15 minutes goes by and she finally brings out the drinks and she then takes our order. Over an hour goes by and one of us asks our waitress why it's taking so long for our food so she goes back to the kitchen and after about another 10 minutes goes by she comes back and tells us that she forgot to put our order in... mind you the restaurant is not busy at all and there is only three other tables seated and so she said that she was sorry and brought out bread and we waited another 15 minutes and finally our food comes out. My husbands calzone was burnt, my manicotti with sausage, literally had 4 small pieces of sausage! What shocked me was when our friend asked for extra shrimp on his dish and when she hands him is plate she tells him "let me know if you want extra shrimp because I thought you may want to try the regular portion before adding more" if he asked for extra shrimp then he wants extra shrimp! Another friend had gotten a dish with shrimp and she didn't like it so the waitress told her "well here is what I can do, I can take it off your tab but I will have to charge you for the shrimp". Our waitress seemed like a nice girl but she was very very rude and did not seem like she cared about her guests. Overall this was a terrible experience and I don't think we...