The Original Mario the Baker — Restaurant in Royal Palm Beach

What a huge disappointment. My mom, sister, and I went out for dinner and decided to give Mario the Baker another try. Our first visit was decent, so we figured, why not? Big mistake.

From the start, things were off. We didn’t get the specials menu until we were already halfway through ordering—not a big deal, but definitely disorganized. Unfortunately, that was far from the worst part of the night.

The salad came out with cucumbers that tasted off—almost poisonous, like they’d been soaked in something chemical. My sister tried one bite and pushed the plate away. We told the waitress, who literally just shrugged and walked off. No apology, no concern, no follow-up. We waited for her to return to ask for more dressing and let her know again about the cucumbers—but she disappeared until the main food came out. Mind you, this was around 8:30 p.m., and the restaurant was nearly empty—maybe two other tables. There were two servers working. Where was ours?

When the food finally arrived, the presentation was sloppy and rushed. Honestly, I’ve never seen plates look that bad at a sit-down restaurant. My $18.99 meal looked like two side dishes thrown onto mismatched plates, one of which looked dirty. My mom ordered pasta with clam sauce, which had tiny, tasteless clams (definitely canned) and zero flavor. My dish was a chicken cutlet, and somehow they managed to ruin even that. The chicken tasted old—like it had been sitting around for days. I was starving and still only managed to eat a few bites of chicken and pasta. The cream sauce, which was supposed to be Alfredo, tasted like something out of a jar from the grocery store.

I asked the waitress if the chicken was old, but before I could finish my sentence, she turned and said she’d get the manager. The manager—an older woman—came over and told me the chicken is “pounded fresh every morning.” I know what old chicken tastes like, and that wasn’t fresh. She then said it might’ve been a “bad piece” of chicken—her words. If you suspect it’s a bad piece, why are you serving it at all? It had rubbery bits and was just disgusting.

I explained that I would’ve asked for something else if the waitress hadn’t been MIA, and all she did was argue. No apology, no accountability. We weren’t even asking for a discount—we just wanted them to know this was unacceptable. But clearly, they didn’t care.

Hoping dessert might redeem the meal, we ordered cappuccinos and dessert. My cappuccino was the only thing that was halfway decent. When dessert came, the table was still full of dirty plates. The server didn’t bother clearing anything—we had to hand her plates and even ended up placing some on the windowsill just to have room for dessert.

We will never return to this place. The food was awful, the service worse, and the manager made it clear that they don’t care about customer feedback. It’s a shame, because if someone in charge had shown even a little concern, maybe we’d give it another shot. But after this? Absolutely not.

My family owns a restaurant, so I know how the industry works—and this was unacceptable on every level. Honestly, if I weren’t in the business myself, I might’ve reported this place to the health department over how bad those cucumbers tasted. But instead, I’m sharing this experience to warn others. I’ll be posting in our local Facebook group too. All we packed to go with the garlic bread and they gave us a barbecue bag for it. What a joke.

Avoid this place at all costs. The food is terrible, the service is worse, and the management just...

If I were to describe my dining experience today, the kindest words I could say, is that It was extremely disappointing.

Eight months ago my wife and I visited this establishment and was very satisfied with the food (pizza). Today, it was an absolute disaster and you have lost us as customers. We don’t know what the hell happened in these eight months, but for us to have this drastic of a changed mind says something.

If you want to state that your pizza is "NY style", someone from your establishment should travel to NY and eat at a local pizzeria a few dozen times to get some pointers. And if the current owner (Matteo) claims he is from NY, I want to see your birth certificate, because if you are, then you obviously lost the spirit of the NY pie in your transition to Florida.

We ordered a medium pie with sausage and we were stunned on what we received. Here are the facts:

Small and Expensive - The medium pie is small, around 12 inches, something I would call a BAR PIE, at the ridiculous price of $12.50 with the so called sausage on it. That is expensive even by NY/NJ standards.

Hide the Sausage - We could not find the sausage. In fact, we thought they screwed up the order to the point that we asked if it was a sausage pie. We were told yes, so we rummaged through the pie only to find a minimal amount of ground up sausage hiding under the cheese. It was like they hired HARRY HOUDINI to make the pizza and our meal became an optical illusion.

Is this Sausage, or very dry ground up Meatballs? – Yes, it was that bad. At first we didn’t know what we were eating until my wife separated a few small pieces from under the cheese and we tasted it. It was spicy, dry, and tasted like card board, which ironically is what CHEAP Chorizo sausage from ALDI food stores tastes like when you cook the hell out of it.

Is it real, or is it caned marinara? – We have all tasted canned marinara sauce. Very few places actually make their own marinara. So Unless your cooks were under the tutelage of “Chef Boyardee” no way in hell was the sauce from scratch. Therefore, to say you serve “FINE Italian Food” and have those words boldly printed on your golf shirt is nothing less than criminal. Perhaps a day or two at the Palm Beach county college for culinary lessons would help in this area.

In summary about the pizza, if I were to properly place “The Original Mario The Baker” pizza in a list of pies by taste, presentation, ingredients, originality and cost, it would most likely fall between the Tombstone original classic sausage pizza (2 pack) an everyone’s childhood delight, the Ellio’s toaster over pizza slices (9 pack) both of which cost much less and give the same satisfaction of fullness and gastric distress after consumption.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention two other things. It's bad enough that I have just slammed the pizza, but we ordered two side salad's at $3.25 each, and again, nothing short of a criminal offence to charge that much for........get ready because here it comes........a bowl of iceberg lettuce with 2 black olives and 2 cherry tomatoes. How dare you do this to your customer's. It makes me sick to think I over paid $3.10 on a $0.15 item. The word "swindler" doesn't do justice here.

To top off our visit to "TOMtB" , we were overcharged for a single domestic beer. It was made good on at the register, but it's one more reason to never return again.

So sorry "TOMtB" . Just like your initials suggest, (TOMB) you...

Good afternoon,

I would love to start out by saying that overall this establishment has been around for years and for good reason the food is delicious and consistent for the most part, as for the service team they are fantastic and always have a smile on their face they seem like they love being there and take pride in what they do although they do get extremely busy at time and overwhelmed as this is the hospitality industry at the end of the day. This is also my industry as well as I have been managing resorts and prvt members only clubs for 10 years now which leads me to my next statement, the support staff itself is fantastic along with the servers and culinary team. When it comes to working together as a team they have got this down to the line. The Busser’s and servers seem like they have a great understanding of each other and your open kitchen concept with the culinary shows how smooth the flow of the culinary team is as they put on a show when stretching the dough out for the pizza when they toss it back to each other mid stretch. However, the team leads or management team needs lots of work in supporting your team as I come in with friends and sometimes for work to show off hidden local gens and when you are very busy, lack of management/lead support seems to be a common theme when there is chaos on the floor from what it seems like the managers tend to stay behind the scenes and let the issues get brought to their attention instead of walking the floor trying to resolve them before they get bigger and or just miss the issues completely. Martha I believe is her name who I believe is a captain or manager who seems to hide when chaos happens or from what it seems like to criticize her team instead of helping them take orders and run food it seems like she just rather go tell them they are falling behind instead of helping. As for the other managers they tend to stay in the back of the house and is a rare sighting if they do appear on the floor as when there front of the house staff is clearly struggling they are no where to be found supporting the staff as a manager should be. Helping touch tables and backing their staff where needed. This is just something to bring to your attention apart from the higher up support this is a amazing establishment and has a great team both front of the house and culinary and I will continue to come back and show this delicious pizza, pasta, and garlic rolls off to as many...