Adriatic Cafe Italian Grill — Restaurant in Shenandoah

Unfortunately, the reality of the actual served food did not live up to the anticipation. I was so excited to try this place but be honest it was very mediocre and underwhelming. I see the potential of this restaurant but it's just not there and had a decent experience but not the best or the worst. This is a newer restaurant in The Woodlands area, and I was quite excited to try it and I even saw the 4.1-star rating and thought it's probably going to be somewhere in the realm of an Olive Garden. The food quality didn't connect with me, and I was a little disappointed. This is a new location and looks quite pleasant on the outside and walking inside we were immediately greeted and brought to a table. I have been in construction and recognized the smell of fresh drywall which I could still vaguely smell in the dining area, as this is a very new construction. Everything was clean and as we sat in the booth, we were then greeted by our server who was pleasant but also a little bit disconnected. We start off by ordering our drinks and an appetizer of the fried zucchini. There are also garlic bread rolls which took a while to come out and we're just very buttery almost croissant like bread rolls. The zucchini appetizers were good, but it was a very small portion for what you pay for. It was about ten very small deep fried zucchini sticks, almost the size of mozzarella cheese fried sticks. They were good and fresh, but it was the portion size was small. Next came our dinners that we ordered. We had ordered the fettuccine tortellini and also the sampler platter, as I wanted to get an idea of all their foods. The fettuccine tortellini was actually good, served in a nice fettuccine/garlicky sauce. The sampler platter was a different story, where it was three different types of Italian foods but just served in a gravy boat style dish all drowned in spaghetti sauce with cheese on top. I literally could not distinctively tell one type of Italian food from the other in it it ended up just being a giant soup bowl of glop. I was hoping they would be served on a plate in separate portions but that is not how they do it here. I was not keen on that and really disappointed to just eat a gravy bowl of slop. The service was good, and the staff was very pleasant. The tabletops were kept very clean and nice presentation. The overall atmosphere and Clinics of the restaurant was still in a very new stage and maintained well. Overall, I can only give the Adriatic Grill one thumbs up because although it was good service and nice ambience, the food presentation, portion sizes and quality was subpar. I probably won't be coming back here again, and I cannot recommend this restaurant for an Italian dinner. The presentation and the food quality just doesn't match the pricing. If I were to compare it, I would say that the Adriatic Cafe is the "Subway sandwich shop of Italian...

Sooo, you know how Olive Garden is kind of like, an OK place to go eat. It’s Italian American. It has free bread. Subdued flavors across the board. It’s the same here. Atmosphere is a little muddled in its theme. Nice dining room, galley style sports bar with outer booths throughout (which i like). The bathroom looks like the neighboring apartment complex maintenance guy designed it. So not on theme, or Italian, or Adriatic or 21st century even. Music sounds like they didn’t spring for the paid version. Think 80s elevator music. So bad, it was almost entertaining all by itself. Food, meh. Regular Italian fare. See pics. The salad, which i almost never get, was the highlight of the show! I really enjoyed it. Everything else was priced too high for what it was. Unless you are just dying for good old spaghetti like mom used to make (if your mom isn’t Italian and can’t cook very well.). Oh, boy location location location! This puppy is the last stop on the busiest section of feeder north of Houston. I’m given to hyperbole, but this is no joke. Every restaurant and business and box store for the whole previous mile and a half is interconnected with parking lots, back roads and shared inner streets. Not Adriatic. Nope. It is the last and only thing that has no interconnecting roadway to anything. If you miss the driveway, you are in for a 3 mile double u-turn under I-45. The map shows the back of the parking lot connecting to the rest of that stuff i mentioned earlier. But, they gave up about 20’ shy and put up a barricade to the ditch. So no quick jaunt to the movies after…you have to fight to get back on the the feeder and enjoy your...

What an atrocious experience, I'm still in disbelief! First of all, we were there for two and a half hours, that's how slow service was. Granted, we were a party of ten. Server took our drink order and it arrived about twenty minutes later, food order was taken about half an hour later and took about another half hour to arrive. For my dish, I asked if possible to sub the chicken for steak and was told "yes, of course, I got you!" When the bill arrived, I was surprised with a $15 upcharge for the steak! I definitely knew there would be an upcharge, but for it to be almost as much as another plate???? I proceeded to ask the waiter if that was right and she went to talk to the manager. Manager comes to our table and "apologized, but that was the charge for a side of steak..." I told him it would've been nice to have been offered a heads up as a courtesy and allow me to decide, or even to suggest an actual steak dish from the menu! It would've even been cheaper to order a steak dish altogether! with a side of pasta! Manager apologized again but guess what, we still got stuck with the bill, and all the other extras that were offered as if they were included with the meal and ended up not (salads.)Waiter asked everyone "House or Cesar salad with that?" And the salads were not included either! But with that type of question it was assumed, yet another surprise on the bill. That's a sad strategy to make a buck more in tip IMHO, but a very stupid one too. All in all, the deceit was what really killed it for me. Courtesy and transparency in this case goes a long way, in the long run. Better believe they got all the "extras," but they lost 10...