Pizza Nova — Restaurant in San Marcos

I want to first point out that my typical review of this establishment is a solid five stars...until yesterday. BF and I always sit in the bar area because in any restaurant, that usually equates to better/faster service, AND we are usually fortunate enough to get Emily as our server. Emily is THE BEST there is. We were not lucky enough to have Emily yesterday. We sat down and were soon greeted by Madelyn who took our drink order - two glasses of wine, two waters. The easiest/fastest thing to get on the table, right? We waited a solid 10+ minutes to get what is the easiest drink order because the bartender, Regina, was nowhere to be found...oh, wait...there she is at the hostess station yacking it up. We later overheard Regina tell another guest that it was her last day on the job so that explains a lot. She was definitely already checked out. There were times during our visit that we would look around for a server and no staff were to be found. Like everyone vanished all at once for several minutes at a time. We ordered a pizza to share, fettucini alfredo with shrimp, and lasagna. Madelyn said to me, "You realize lasagna takes at least 25 minutes to come out, right?" I almost always order the lasagna and no one has ever said that before and it has never taken 25 minutes before, but it did yesterday. When the lasagna arrived it was a giant puddle of noodles and sauce instead of its usual solid rectangle of deliciousness, almost like they tried to pass off a Stouffers frozen lasagna as their own. Madelyn dropped the food off and never came back to check in on us. She was very robotic; not UNfriendly but definitely does not have the personality to be serving the public. Maybe it was her first day on the job? All this to say our dining experience yesterday was 180 degrees from past experiences. We will return to PN, hopefully to find it has returned to the great place we have been accustomed to....

I would go again, sorry no photos. I wasn't planning on reviewing. I ordered the works pizza medium (enough for 2), fettuccini Alfredo with chicken (also enough for 2). I'm a big guy so I ate all the chicken Alfredo and 2 slices of pizza. Sadly the best item was their garlic bread balls? They aren't sticks but not quite balls either. Anyways. Garlic bread is on point and you can ask for more. The 1st slice was delicious, the 2nd was okay. Idk something about the temperature dropping made it less good however the veggies on it was very tasty, the meat was typical flavor no spice surprise on the meat. The chicken on the Alfredo was delicious not too dry and not too moist. The Alfredo sauce was creamy and flavorful. The fettuccini which is my favorite pasta was okay. It didn't stand out which normally it does for me. I also ordered a something Mai Tai which the first 2 sips was delicious and then the rest was terribly strong which I'm assuming I forgot to mix it enough. The glass of water at the end was surprisingly tasteful and delicious. The staff was super nice and quick to react. We were a party of 5. The other people order a shrimp wrap, some type of soup, beer and some other mix drinks. They all said it was very tasty but I can't chime in on what they ordered but visually.. I'm definitely ordering a chicken wrap next time with fries because it's BIG. Anyways, i hope you do try them out. We arrived at 7 pm and we were seated within 5 minutes. We were served drinks within 5 minutes and our order was taken within 7 minutes so overall really fast for a restaurant. Our server was really nice, i didn't catch her name even she told us...

We entered and went there for dine in after a long day of errands. They told us if dining inside was fine and we said yes. We then just sat down at the front for 20 minutes just waiting, they didn't even bother asking for our name. When we askes what was going on, they askes us what our name was and we clearly stated that they didn't take our name. They served other people first when we had been sitting for more than 20 minutes. Not one person walked up and asked anything. Poor service and it reflects immediately at the front. I would recommend retraining your entire staff on customer service because it is the worst thing for any business to make a customer wait only to tell a customer that you don't have a name even if they were there before other customers. Poor management and poor customer service makes the food taste disgusting. I would get better service at a McDonalds with a broken ice cream machine than Pizza Noza... that's...