Pazzo MMX — Restaurant in Red Bank

I take back the above single star due to the fact that Google won’t let the review post unless one is selected. In that case, my review stands at ZERO stars but I would like to give MINUS FIVE!!! Monday night, April Fool’s Day: I should have realized IMMEDIATELY, that my “best laid-plans” for what promised to be a pleasant night out one of my favorite restaurants was going to go astray and rapidly descend into the farcical. Upon entering the parking garage adjacent to Pazzo MMX, I was tremendously surprised to discover that the gate was down and that it was apparent that parking, much to my chagrin, was no longer FREE. After taking my ‘ticket’, parking my vehicle my guests and I headed to what, from numerous past experiences, we expected to be a wonderful dining experience. Sadly that it NOT what happened. When announcing ourselves to the hostess we were informed that the specific table I purposely RESERVED four days prior was NOT available at the pre-arranged time. I politely asked her about the pay parking and she said that since new owners took over they began charging customers. Mmmmm? The hostess also mentioned that our prior RESERVED table should be ready in approximately 15-20 minutes. OK. I said to the hostess that in that case we would take seats at the bar and wait until it was. Instead, within 2-minutes of arriving at the bar hostess #2 appeared and offered our party another RESERVED table, which of course we accepted and were seated with menus. It was about 5-minutes before a member of the wait staff arrived with a basket of bread…period!! No offer to fill the water glasses or that a waiter/waitress would be along shortly to take both our drink and meal order. NONE of that took place. As we looked over the menu not a single waiter/waitress appeared even after every member of our party completed their menu review. 10 minutes elapsed…15 minutes elapsed… waiters and waitresses walked past our table several times and NONE stopped to take our orders. As we watched other patrons/diners around us being served and attended to even by the dining room manager, who walked directly past our table without so much as a glance in our direction. 20 minutes past…25 minutes ticked away and STILL NO SERVICE. We all then decided that if we were NOT accommodated after 30 minutes we would leave the premises, post-haste! When the deadline arrived we all stood up and left DISGUSTED & DISAPPOINTED at the treatment we had just received. The ultimate INSULT and coup de grace for an utterly ruined dining experience had to be paying the parking rate for essentially NO SERVICES RENDERED. Over the last seven years I, along with numerous friends and family have patronized PAZZO MMX on a variety of occasions and EACH TIME enjoyed the WHOLE experience; FREE parking, restaurant atmosphere, dining room/bar, and above all the food!! This time around neither was relished!! I thoroughly understand that with new management comes growing pains but after reading some of the negative reviews about PAZZO MMX it seems that consistency in dissatisfaction is pretty common. Needless to say I will NEVER be going to PAZZO MMX, nor will our guests. I have passed this review along to as many friends and family that I know and have urged them to do the same. There are so many other restaurants in Red Bank and Monmouth County that deserve patronage and I will be doing...

March 18, 2013 Family Dinner at Pazzo in Red Bank tonight... WHAT A DISAPPOINTMENT.

ZERO Stars

Our waiter buzzed past and around us for approximately 20 mins without stopping at our table. We watched him serve a couple who sat down after us and an adjacent table. He ignored us for so long, I decided that he was at strike two -- he had one more time to pass our table and we were leaving. He got the simplest soda drinks wrong (a shirley temple and a ginger ale no ice). His explanation was that the fountain was serving tonic instead of ginger ale... okay honest mistake. I'm not hard to please. He took our dinner order without telling us the specials or offering appetizers. We waited and waited for our pasta entrees while he continued to buzz past our table. The next table (and others) received drinks, appetizers and almost finished their dinner before we were served.

Two managers stood near us, made their rounds and stood near us some more without checking on us once. Our server apologized once or twice. After a full 30 mins of waiting, we were sitting there so conspicuously -- empty glasses, no food -- a manager came over, apologized and offered another glass of wine. Soon after, our entrees arrived. No one explained why our specific entrees took so long compared to other patrons. They just said they were sorry. I don't understand what could have been the problem since we didn't order anything special.

I eat out A LOT and I know when I'm getting good service and when something is amiss. They comped us two glasses of wine and another apology. That was it. The entrees were good, but we had all but lost our appetites by the time they came. The server apologized once again saying it was unacceptable, but still no explanation of what went wrong with OUR order. I remained pleasant as usual and did not short him on the tip.

I am VERY DISAPPOINTED with the service and will not return to Pazzo (unless I decide to carry out a social experiment -- if you know what I mean). What a disappointment Pazzo -- EPIC FAIL! I can't help but to think that you never want us...

SO disappointing. We have gone to Pazzo many times and never had a negative experience until this past Wednesday 7/26. Our family went for a birthday dinner and had the most unpleasant experience. First, we order drinks and one member tries to order FOUR different kinds of beer in which they were told "we're out of all of those." He finally is able to get a Bud Light...it is brought WARM to the table...they dipped the bottle in the ice bucket and brought it to the table....the soda machine was either not cleaned and/or had to be changed because the 5 Diet Cokes ordered were essentially clear colored. Then, we order appetizers in which the crab cakes were so over cooked when you cut them they crumbled into pieces and could not be eaten. Also, asked for some bread and we're told "we ran out we don't have any." (Every table around us had bread) Finally, after waiting 30 minutes we were finally able to find our waiter and asked to order (the restaurant was empty at this point) to be told they are out of Bronzino. Fine, we order other things, but when the food came the only decent meals were the plain pizza and the penne vodka. The Nonna's Rigatoni Mezze was sooo greasy the plate was filled with oil, and the sauce was a dark brown color. The halibut was so dry that it essentially rolled off the dish when it was cut. Truly are never complainers but for the bill to be $419 BEFORE tip and well over $500 after a tip and not a single thing to be taken off the bill when most of the food was hardly touched or untouched is really upsetting. Have never had a bad experience but will never be back after this. Complete waste of money, left...