Mama Cella's — Restaurant in San Diego

We ordered catering take out. Ordered half of a tray of spaghetti and half of a tray of fettuccine. Ordered over $300 of food. When we arrived we were told that we had to pay $15 extra each dish because they needed 48hr notice, which was not posted on the website. I brought that up and they discaded me. Knowing at this point I needed it. Then when I went in I asked for 16 plastic forks. They refused unless I pay more for them. A man next to us asked for four forks with his to go order and they did not charge him.... I am extremely disappointed because I love to help small businesses and had hoped that the customer service would have been better. The food was fine but after leaving there, left a bitter taste from how discourteous they were. We travel to this location a few times a year and we wont be back. Please Mama Cellas don't treat future...

Nice little family run Italian restaurant in Rancho Bernardo that my friend recommended to us. It's small so it's best to make reservations in advance. We were lucky to snag their last table on a Friday evening.

Service was stellar. Everyone was friendly and warm. We were checked on often and our dishes arrived in a timely manner.

The food was hit or miss. I ordered the clam linguine with spicy red sauce. It was on the heavy side and loaded with clams, but a bit plain. The clams didn't taste fresh. We also ordered the chicken parmigiana and that was pretty good. The chicken was moist and crispy. The garlic bread was delicious. Really enjoyed that.

We ordered the tiramisu for dessert. It's one of my favorite desserts but theirs was pretty plain. And I didn't like all those shaved almonds on top. Overkill and that's all I was tasting over a...

Having eaten here a few times, my impression is that the food is good (the pizza gets even better when ordered on crispy thin crust). The challenge, especially in dining with small children or a group of more than four people, is that without a reservation the narrow dining room makes it difficult to move much around in terms of tables and chairs, so the wait time to be seated and subsequent service can seem to suffer. Oddly enough, for as good as most of the menu is, the spumoni is ordinary enough to not bother with (I know, a lot of you would day that of good spumoni, but it has been a favorite since I was a kid and I am always thrilled when I am served really good spumoni). My family has had a pretty good sampling of the menu and can pretty confidently otherwise say this place is a bit of a gem tucked into a little...