Livio's Restaurant — Restaurant in St. John

Knock knock, who is there? Italian dish without garlic! Need I say more? Well ok I'll elaborate a tad. Tonight was date night. So I whipped out my trusty Yelp app to find a nice Italiana restaurant. (We have just moved to the area. We are getting around and taking in the local eatery's.) This place rates a 4 on a 5 scale, so We'll give it a shot. We get out of the car and the aroma outside is amazing. I'd like to say what we smelled was from this place But don't let that fool ya, there are other eateries nearby. We walked into the dining area and I feel like Mary McFly just dropped me off in the Delorean. Super outdated decor, I mean 1970's Red Lobster Days. I thought I came into an Italiana restaurant not a seafood restaurant. It is a little confusing as there also is an aeronautical application present with the hot air balloons and aircraft hanging from the ceiling. I was looking forward to some baked clams. Ya nope not there! Mussels yes no clams. We ordered he fried combo plate. The calamari was good but lacked seasoning. In fact all of the items lacked seasoning. The battle in itself was keeping the breading on the fried mushrooms. I indulged in a glass of the house moscato. Umm jury is out on that still. Kinda tasted like sweetened apple juice. Next course was our soups. 3-4 bites and done! The texture was off. Grainy. The server replaced the soup with salads which was honorable. I was told there would be an extra charge for the Blue Cheese dressing. Don't wast your time. The sprinkling of crumbles on top of the dressing was all that represented the stout blue cheese flavor I was looking for. Ok well onward to the main courses. I had the chicken Florentine and my fiancé had the linguine. Please look at the Olive oil that is used here. The only flavor profiles represented were the cherry tomatoes we asked to be put into the dish. Revert to the beginning of this review. No Garlic flavors were presented. Not event a hint of basil. My Florentine was presented well but the cream sauce needs help. I have had better cream sauce with my biscuits & sausage gravy. What a huge disappointment so much so that I was looking at the Yelp app to try and salvage the night at a different Italian restaurant. We didn't even consider dessert for fear of further disappointment. There is no reason for me to return unless this place finds...

Approximately 3 weeks before Christmas, I called and ordered a tray of Lasagna for Christmas Eve (for 20 guests). Although this is NOT the first time I have ordered Lasagna for the holidays, it IS the first time I ordered from Livios. Usually I order from Little Italy, however, as a resident of St. John I decided to order more locally. At the time, the option was given for me to pick up a "hot" or "cold" tray of lasagna. I chose "hot." The order was set to be picked up Christmas Eve between 4:00 - 4:30. A friend of mine picked it up for me on the way to my home. To my surprise, it was ice-cold. My friend did not know it was supposed to be hot. I immediately contacted Livios and was told that at some point they decided that they were only taking orders for "cold" trays. I was told to warm it up for 2 hours at 350. This was not going to work as I already had items in my oven and did not have the space nor the time (we did not plan on eating at 7Pm). Needless to say, we did the best we could. However, since the lasagna was fully cooked upon pick up, it was "mush" and almost inedible after cooking again in the oven. Unfortunately, it was tossed out. This was very disappointing and a waste of money. Had I been made aware that my order was changed from "hot to cold" I simply would have canceled. Unfortunately, no contact was made to tell me of the change. Next year, I will stick with...

Livio’s in St. John used to be one of our most favorite restaurants prior to COVID. We went there this afternoon to eat one of our favorite meals, Baked Rigatoni and Sausage. Mind you, I said one of our favorite meals. We got our meals and instead of sliced mild Italian Sausage as we usually have gotten in this dish, we got pizza sausage instead. I mentioned this to our waitress, Donna, and she tells us that they’ve always used “Italian Sausage Balls” for the 17 years that she’s worked there! We tried to explain to her that we’ve had this meal there before, it was a favorite. She insisted we were wrong. The meal didn’t even taste the same…. Just not at all what we had expected! I don’t know what was worse, the swap out of the sausage, or the waitress telling us we were wrong about one of our favorite meals that we drove 20 miles for! What a bad experience on the very first date with my wife since COVID began! Talk about COVID…. COVID19 precautions do not exist in this place! Well…. They just lost a long...