Italian Pizza Kitchen Roselle — Restaurant in Roselle

Tried IPK on a Friday night for date night since we we're in the area. We didn't need to make reservations and we we're seated right away. I would come back and recommend to try it out, but I wouldn't go out of my way to come here. They have their own private parking lot. They have outdoor and indoor seating available. Since it was so hot outside, we decided to sit inside and we felt safe in regards to the precautions with COVID. All of the staff had on masks. Tables were seated 6ft apart and they did have hand sanitizer available. They also provided the condiments like parmesan cheese and crush red pepper in tiny sealed bags. They have a bar and dining room area with TVs all around. I loved the decor and lighting. This is a great place for date night or casual hangout with friends. Even a great place for just drinks and appetizers. The customer service was great! We we're greeted right away when we walked in and the hostesses was even so kind that she offered to move a table outside for us if we wanted to sit outside. Our waitress was Christy. Christy was friendly, offered great recommendations and kept checking on us.

They have a good selection of drinks and great beers on tap! This is actually the first place I have been to that has gumballhead on draft. I also tried their Tuscan sour (whiskey sour) and it was delicious! They have a good menu size with different options. They give you complimentary bread & oil which is always a fav at Italian restaurants. The bread was so warm and fresh! It is a generous amount too. For our order, we tried:

Fried calamari - this was my favorite dish of the whole night. It was cooked perfectly and I love the tiny bottle of Tabasco sauce they give you. It was lightly breaded and still had the perfect crunch to it. The price is worth it. I would say with the portion, 1-3 people can share this.

Polpette - this is a new dish to their menu which is 3 meatballs served in marina & vodka sauce with basil and fresh ricotta cheese. The meatballs were cooked perfectly. The marina sauce was just ok. To me, the vodka sauce was better. It was something different to try, but if you don't order it, your not missing much! Also, it is $9, which is not worth it to me, in my opinion.

Bone in Chicken Wings, buffalo sauce - this was my second favorite dish of the night and I definitely recommend them. Great portion, worth the price, good buffalo sauce and they same out fresh! I recommend order well-done for that nice little crisp.

Medium Thin Crust Pizza - the pasta and entrees, even the burgers looked so good, but this was our first time at IPK, how would we not try their pizza? The thin crust was soo good! With all the apps we ordered, we probably could have got a personal, but it's always good to have leftovers. The sauce was delicious, the crust has the perfect crunch to it and...

I've tried this place a few times and my last experience firmly plants a one-star rating into the surface of this "pizza kitchen" masquerading as Italian food.

First, let's be real: Italian food is already the biggest rip-off when this place charges $9.00 for a $0.50 box of spaghetti with olive oil of dubious grade and labels it an actual dish that one needs to pay for.

Next, I had their fettuccini alfredo, which CANNOT be homemade contrary to their claim for this $11.50 item. It in no way tastes better than any alfredo sauce I've had except store-bought (it's possible it was better than those types because it was hot?- I don't know).

NOTE: the Barnelli's (inside the Schaumburg Portillo's) has insanely delicious pasta for a lower price and you would swear they locked an Italian grandmother to cook it all in their kitchen.

Anyways, I finally ordered an Italian sub from Italian Pizza Kitchen and drove to my job, which was far away. I open up the $7.00 sandwich only to see they serve it open-face; that's wonderful seeing that the lettuce all fell off, exposing the cheap ingredients that awaited me, ugh.

So I'll jump ahead now, two days later when I returned to Roselle and went to IPK requesting a 50% refund for the sandwich that was gross, quite frankly. I figured I ate it because I was hungry and located too far to return it that night. Kind of a 50/50 deal, you know? I had the receipt and wasn't happy that Subway makes an identically-sized sandwich of much higher quality for half the price.

I told their cashier I was unhappy with two cheap tomato slices, stale bread, four "cost-efficient" slices of meat and an Italian vinaigrette that seemed bottled from the salad dressing isle. She told me they couldn't give me ANY money back and she rebuked every opinion I had about their lousy product; no sorry, nothing. I asked for a manager and there was none, so she called someone (seriously, my $3.50 means SO MUCH she has to call out about it?!)

Instead of saying "Ok, we're really sorry you came all the way back here and were disappointed," she told me the manager ONLY approved $3.50 (god forbid they offer a full $7.00 refund for my effort and annoyance) in cash and they won't do it again...

Well thank YOU Italian Pizza Kitchen, I won't be back again, so it's no...

The food is excellent. Period, full stop. They do, however, advertise a claim of providing safe contactless delivery during a pandemic. Upon ordering, I wasn't able to tip the driver thru the app. It's not possible with the outdated user interface they use (or their processing agent uses), so I abandon the order on the app and called instead. I placed my order & asked the customer service person to please add in a tip for the delivery person, as my family needs to take the precaution of contactless delivery because we have a family member who is highly susceptible to covid-19 & it's potentially life-threatening consequences. The customer service person added the in the tip with the order & confirmed no-contact delivery.

Unfortunately, when the driver arrived he wore no mask and expected me to open the door. Why would I (or anyone) want a close, face-to-face interaction & hand-off of food with a stranger who spends hours each day going door-to-door to other stranger's homes without a mask?! Is he crazy? Are the owners of IPK crazy? (Yeah, no thanks). I asked him to please leave the order on my porch and he did so without incident, but he seemed genuinely confused about my trepidation at opening the door. He was polite and I did not comment to him about his lack of mask and didn't feel it was appropriate for me to do so.

I do think, however, that IPK needs to school their drivers, staff and maybe themselves about the infection rate (currently rising) in Illinois. I realize this social distancing & mask stuff is annoying, but their staff openly ignoring health department guidelines is dangerous.

I gave 3 stars because the food is excellent and they do a good job all around in my experience of ordering from them for at least 7 years. I feel bad taking away what would normally be a 5 star rating, but maskless delivery personnel is thoughtless and dangerous to the community and to my family. Don't get me wrong, if you don't want to wear a mask in day to day life, that's up to you, but front line workers not taking basic precautions is unacceptable. Please fix this problem IPK & I'll happily edit...