Marro's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in Saugatuck

Myself and a group of girls were out for a girls weekend and one of the girls was raving about this place so we decided to check it out. Upon arriving I asked the hostess if she was able to accommodate a group of 11, meaning seat us all at the same table. She said yes, but maybe I wasn't clear enough because we were split between a booth (7) and a table (4). Not a big deal, we went with the flow. However, when it came time for the service portion of our visit I can confidently say this was the worst we have ever experienced. seven of us at the table waited and waited for our server to greet our table and take our drink orders. Once she finally came we looked over at the booth behind us where the 4 other girls were dining and saw that they already had their drinks and appetizers. I simply asked if this establishment could make a pomegranate martini and was surprised at the servers response of I am not sure, well, I am just going to say no, what else do you want? The gal next to me was pregnant and asked what the NA options were, the server again could not answer a single response besides giving her a nasty look and saying just order something. Before everyone could even place their drink orders she rushed off. We waited some more and eventually were able to flag her down to put in our appetizer orders and the rest of the drink orders. By then the rest of the girls in the booth behind us were getting their salads. Eventually our appetizers came out while we were still waiting on our drinks when we had to flag out server down again to take our food orders. Meanwhile, we watched out server cater heavily to the tables around us of middle aged couples. whenever she would walk past our table she would lower her gaze and rush by. I had to flag down 2 other servers that were standing close and ask them to bus our table for us so that there would be room for our entrees. Once the food came it was obvious it had been sitting for a while before it had reached out table so it was not hot anymore. Finally, 2 hours later we flagged our server down again to ask for the bill. I simply asked if we could split it to receive a big grunt/sigh that I should have told her at the beginning of the meal to split our tab because now it was too much work for her. I ended up telling her to not worry about it and I would calculate it out myself after the fact.

Prior to being seated we were planning on ordering a couple of bottles, apps, entrees, pre and post meal drinks, and desserts. We didn't because of the bad service, most of us are ex-servers so we understand being in the weeds or being busy but to bluntly be rude to us with responses is completely unacceptable. We were nothing but nice to our server and even tipped her when we...

Extremely long wait times and poor front desk staff quoting us a wait time that was exceeded by 45 minutes started Father's Day off poorly. Okay, I can understand Father's Day is a busy day, I get it.

Finally we were seated, but they seated us across from the bar. The bar isn't very large, maybe 12-14 seats, but the noise was unbearable. There was a guy playing guitar and singing next to the bar, and the bar patrons are making more noise than a full BW3s. I took my parents to Marro's for an intimate dining experience on Dad's day and instead it sounded like we were at a kegger.

The waiter was pretty inattentive, though in his defense he seemed like he had far too many tables. Drinks sat empty for many minutes, the salads came out about 3 minutes before the entrees, and he stood at the table next to ours for minutes at a time talking (loudly, since it was so loud in there).

The food came out and we were unimpressed. With the ratings this place has, I would have expected it to be far better than Olive Garden. Nope, not even close. The lasagna tasted like Stouffers, and my family all felt pretty underwhelmed.

This place falls victim to the "resort town, ratings are far higher than they should be" syndrome. Coming from the Metro Detroit area, I feel like I could have gone to any Italian place around my suburb and I would have enjoyed it far more...

We ate here on a somewhat busy Thursday night in July. The gnudi appetizer was quite good, as was the mojito. However, all 3 of our pastas were mediocre. I often use clam linguine as a baseline and this dish was slightly above average, with a good clam-pasta ratio (mostly canned, with approx 5 real clams), after adding a good amount of red pepper.

The menu as a whole was very boring, consisting of really generic fare. Even the bread was just those lame frozen rolls that many chains use. Parm and red pepper sit in containers on the table (pizza joint). Portion size was on the smaller side. Wine selection very limited and uninspired. Decor was clean, but dated, and not in a fun vintage way. Service was slow and pretty negligent (slow food, no bussers, late drinks, mostly M.I.A. waiter).

We went due to the historical value (it’s apparently been there for 60+ years), but wouldn’t return. It wasn’t bad per se, just not very good (despite our being ravenous at the time). It was disappointing based on the glowing Google reviews, so if you have solid Italian food back home, please take those rave reviews with a...