Flavio's Brick Oven Pizza & Bar Siesta Key — Restaurant in Siesta Key

On October 2, 2017, at 6:30 pm... bill for 4 people-$178... tipped 20% total $214. I took my fiancé and two of her friends to dinner there after a wonderful day of beaching. My friends are from Colorado and my fiancé and I have had many wonderful dining experience is all across the country. I have dined at some of the finest Italian restaurants across the country. I am going to write two reviews with in this. First of all let me tell you that the reason there is only 1 star is because of the food. However, I would give 5 stars for the ambience, Decour, and service, The atmosphere and our service was top shelf. Well done to the servers and the staff that was in the front room. Some of the food that was ordered was the surf and turf, carbonara, grouper rotini, angel hair with red sauce, fillet with a burgundy peppercorn sauce, chicken and olives, stuffed chicken… The fillet that my fiancé ordered and the The fillet that came with my surf and turf was one of the smallest cuts of fillets I have ever been served at in a restaurant. The burgundy peppercorn sauce was absolutely outstanding except for the fact of the very stinky large chunks of onions in it… My carbonara was a wonderful base carbonara except for the large stinky chunks of onions in it which I have never seen in either one of these dishes before… The angel hair pasta with red sauce was wonderful except for the , Once again large smelly chunks of onions in it as well… There was huge amounts of onions in each and every one of our dishes. I enjoy onions but and all honesty the dishes should have been called onions with fillet, onions with pasta, onions with scallops .... I hope the restaurant read this review because you’ve got a wonderful staff and a wonderful atmosphere… But I don’t know who is cooking that night but you don’t put onions in some of the dishes that you were serving and especially large chunks of onion and cheap ones that over took each one of our meals.... we all had to stop and get breath mints to get the onion flavor out of our mouths after we left your restaurant.. so I word to the wise… If you’re going to dine there the food is actually outstanding but do not expect a healthy size piece of beef and asked them to hold the onion. The reason I am writing this review is because I really enjoy the restaurant and want to come back but you need some quality control back in the...

This restaurant is very small, busy and overpriced. It's great Italian food but seriously...$20 for a plain pasta dish? We showed up without reservations and two young kids. We were told a table would be ready in 20 mins...well, 30 mins later, we got our table. A 10 mins difference normally wouldn't matter but two young kids, it's a huge difference. One of my kids spilled my drink, and I thought, oh well, finish what's left of it...I was impressed, the owner Flavio, came out to us and replaced my drink at no charge. He certanily didn't have to do that, nor did we ask. It was clearly our fault, so that part made me at first feel like this was going to be a new favorite family dining place. Once we finally sat for dinner, we ordered an appetizer and both kids meals. For simple cheese ravioli, it took about 45 mins to get to our table. I understand orders are done in the order received, but it's cheese ravioli! We had ordered our dinners shortly after our appetizers were ordered and it took 3 hours to get our linguini with white clam sauce. I'm just shocked a simple dinner took so long to arrive. Due to having children, we packed up and brought the food home. The pasta was hard, the clams were full of sand and it probably would've tasted a lot better if we were able to stay at the restaurant. We were all starving and with two young kids we had already committed to dining there so it wasn't like we could get up and leave. Not sure I'd ever return here with kids. [Side note: the bar area is extremely packed, the northerners waiting for seats at the first come first serve bar, were extremely rude...

We arrived around 5:30 - there were dozens of empty of tables but we were instantly chastised for not having a reservation. This should have been a red flag but we ignored it. After being seated, service was insanely slow. Our food wasn't served until almost 8. If these things weren't bad enough, the food that came out was nowhere near worth what our party ended up paying. I ordered the Risotto Fruiti di Mare. For $30, I think I expected something fairly special, but my meal wasn't very fresh and it reeked of vermouth. I know vermouth or some kind of dry white wine is used in risotto, but it was used far too heavily in this dish. Speaking of the dish, the Risotto itself was pasty - it was too saturated and had cooked too long. The bread we received was also cold and maybe a bit stale. Honestly this meal would have been "okay" had it not been for the $30+ price tag attached to my entree. For three people, the bill was over $150. The only positive experience was maybe the caesar salad I ordered. Perhaps this can be chalked up to a bad night for you guys, but we were very displeased.

One additional note - I think the waitress did her best, but in the future, if a party is unhappy, I don't think it is in her best interest to pay for a drink for the whole party that they may not like. Those drinks were probably $5 a piece if not more, and only one person seemed to enjoy it. I do not think our host tipped (he was very upset at the time), so she ended up wasting not just our time...