Pasta Express — Restaurant in Springfield

I seen their promotion on FB so thought Id give it a try. Well, it was my first, and last time I will ever go. They don't to my knowledge have reviews on FB so I decided to leave a google review. Upon not seeing the ability to leave a FB review, I down graded my google review from a 2, to a 1. I ordered a appetizer garlic bread with cheese, I hated this it came last to the table after I had finished all my other items and didn't come with a marinara to dip it. I thought it tasted awful! I also ordered the Milo salad, I took 2 bites and was oh...I hate this...the dressing to me tastes like Miracle Whip...plain Miracle Whip it was beyond gross to me. I ordered the italian hot beef with peppers and onions. I got a italian hot beef with no peppers or onions. It was charged for, but didn't get done. I found this sandwhich was ok...like ok like a premade deli sandwhich from a gas station kind of ok...it is food, your hungry, you can eat it, Im not doing any back flips saying yummy...it was "just ok" in my book. I oddly didn't like the dill pickle on the plate. I love pickles, I love dill pickles, this dill pickle tasted to me like it came from a can. I was not liking the pickle. The lays chips were the highlight of this meal for me. The lays chips were very good. My soda was good. The restaurant is very neat, and clean. Service staff was nice. I just did not care for the food. I even had some rolls brought to the table. I thought the rolls were like a 2/10 on how rolls would rate, they came with two mints and real butter...I said real butter...real butter saved these little guys for me or I wouldn't have managed to try one. The free mints where to me the iky kind of mint. I spent over $20 for my meal and for that kind of $$$ Id go to Olive Garden hands down 99.9 over a 100 before heading back to pasta express. I didn't find any value to me. I can go to olive Garden and leave very happy for $20...and get a...

While the food was edible it certainly isn't the place to go if you actually enjoy pasta. The prices are pretty good for what you get I suppose. The service was sub-par. Every item we ordered came out individually and they kept getting confused regarding where they were suppose to bring the food. They attempted to give us someone else's food several times and they attempted to take our food to other tables as well. I could understand if it was busy, but there were only 3 tables. We also had numbers on our tables, so I really didn't understand the mix-up.

Oddly, they don't have parmesan cheese readily available. It's a restaurant primarily serving pasta, so it makes no sense why they don't have parmesan at all the tables. You can request it, but it took us about 5 minutes to actually receive it. This was after reminding them to ensure they hadn't forgotten. At first we thought "well maybe it is freshly grated and that's the hold up". Nope looked like just normal parmesan cheese. Again, the restaurant was really slow so this doesn't make sense to me.

I won't be back. Honestly the only reason we went is because my sister wanted pasta and told me: 1) she doesn't like Olive Garden because it's too "authentic" for her (really?) and 2) she didn't want Fazoli's because she can eat that at home. Well that didn't exactly give us many...

Giving 3 stars because I have grown up eating at Pasta Express and it’s always been one of my favorites.

But, recently we have had a negative experience dining inside the restaurant multiple times. Since the kitchen is very open and practically joined with the dining area, your guests CAN hear EVERY conversation that is shared between staff members. Twice now they have criticized the way we order our food (example: no cheese or onion on salad “Then what do they want on it? Just lettuce!??”) We then heard them talking negatively about a new co worker and bashing how she was asking questions. It’s sad because we love the food and the atmosphere but man o man the professionalism is lacking. They currently will not stop bashing another employee. It makes me sad. I won’t eat where I know people are being bullied.

I will add there is one employee I could describe who has not partaken in any negative actions. AND we did tip her :) she’s worked the whole time while...