Tomatina — Restaurant in San Jose

Im not sure Im being fair but base my review strictly on their meatball appetizer $12.50? It was just very average meatball. Ive had much better meatball & sauce elsewhere, thats why Im only giving 2 star. The thing was waiter was busy & really not much service. I understand that he was only one waiter for whole restaurant but he only had about 7 tables ( not too busy). What probably was tough for waiter was that the food had not come for many of the tables so the server had to wait for food to come out for other tables before serving or taking our order. We never got thing like pepper on table. That was my fault, I never ask for pepper. A good restaurant should at least have pepper on table in case the meatballs are not very good. There was a self serve station ( with napkins) so i should have checked there to see if there was black pepper. My Dad wanted some type of White Sauce. They did have alfredo with Chicken. You can substitute shrimp but then they change the sauce to tomato. Dad wanted White sauce so not sure why the waiter told us that if he change to Shrimp, he has to have tomato ( on the menu it says you can have chicken alfredo, Substitute Shrimp for 4 dollars so not sure why waiter did not see that ( then Dad would have had his Alfredo with Shrimp. Anyhow, i was thinking i can cook that at home if that was all he wanted. To give the restaurant credit, they did have lunch special ( which no one told us) but insert in menu. But the lunch special you can choose sandwich. I wish they use English, I believe the sandwich name is Piadine ( flatbread) or if you choose pizza. So if you want pizza & salad you can have both for 13.50 or 13.95. It is my fault for wanting low gluten ( I try to eat less bread) but Dad wanted Italian today. Its just he never got his cream or white sauce. Im not sure why he tipped the waiter 18 or 19 percent, as on the receipt you have option of tip of less than 10 percent. I was confuse because they meant additional tip. My dad tip way more than that, he tip 18 percent. I dont know why he does that when he did not get the food he wanted, & my meatball & marinana not that great. I suppose i should have tried the other dishes. The waiter did make a comment ( when I ask for Dad) I ask for next time about the lunch specials & waiter admited that the quantity for lunch special is kid sized. Combination of my meatballs not being good ( & no pepper on table), it made me miss Dominos as even tho Dominos has too much bread, at least the sausage...

The food is plain & boring, literally I can cook a better pasta with a can sauce! the price on the menu is not the price you will have on your bill! So make sure to double check. if they cared to avoid this review, they would have treated us differently. No restaurant The is a real restaurant will have 2 people eating will a 3rd person is looking at them for 40 minutes! If we where not extremely hungry it was absolutely not worth waiting for... Let’s start with the fact it was Xmas evening, I get it, no one wants to work on this evening, and the place was a-bit busy, but not slammed, I arrived with 2 friends, we waited about 2.5 minutes to be seated, which was great! Other then that the rest was absolutely embarrassing!!! It started with the fact that the waitress which was kinda nice, had no clue about the ingredients in the dishes. Then we placed our order waiting 25 minutes for a glass of wine, then the waitress, came by with a dish that wasn’t ours, we told her it is not ours then she asked us for what we ordered again as she couldn’t find her ticket... (literally I thought she was big)... 20 minutes pass I got my dish which was a uuuu... ok... 15 minutes after my friend got his, and 40 minutes after the last dish came out. We kept complaining and complaining... finally the manager came by to apologize for the wait, with the excuse of over working and being busy... and offer us a desert on the house, which for my opinion was not good enough, he should have given us a discount or another round of wine on...

I recently visited this place and while the food was generally good, my experience was marred by a series of service delays and mix-ups. Upon arrival, we waited a considerable amount of time to be seated, and then another long stretch before our order arrived. Unfortunately, we discovered that our food had actually been sitting on the counter, waiting to be delivered to our table by a server. When we asked about the delay, we were informed that they were short-staffed, which seemed to be a common issue during our past few visits.

To add to the frustration, a few of our items were either forgotten or replaced with the wrong dishes. This was especially surprising since we were dining on a weekday, when we expected things to run more smoothly. While the staff were kind and clearly doing their best, it was evident they were overworked and stretched thin.

The food itself was decent, but the service challenges significantly impacted the overall experience. It seems the restaurant could greatly benefit from additional help in the kitchen and front-of-house to ensure smoother operations. I would be happy to return in the future if these service issues are addressed, as the potential for a great dining experience is...