Luna Rossa — Restaurant in Tewksbury

We had a table booked for 7pm on a Saturday night and when we arrived we were told by the girl seating us that we were next for a booth as my friend asked not to be seated in the back area which is rather loud and off from the main restaurant. We went to the bar to wait and by around 7:20pm we saw a table leaving and being cleaned and we expected to be told that was our table. The next thing we saw was another party of four being shown there who had arrived a good ten minutes after us. One of our party went to inquire what was going on and was told that a party had come in with someone who had had a hip operation and they had decided to seat them first. Fair enough, but they should not have said we were next and they clearly had not booked right as there were no tables even close to finishing anywhere else in the room. Then the Owner/Chef came up to us and was quite defensively aggressive in saying that he had sanctioned this and it was him to blame etc but did not say sorry and it was mentioned that it seemed as if this party was seated because they knew them as they could have simply found them a seat to wait for their table. He did not deny this. We had one free drink at the bar and at 8pm one hour after the time we had booked our table at they took us to our table. They showed us to the far back room where we had asked to not be seated. A large party were at a table and we would not have been able to hear ourselves speak in the room. We refused the table and luckily a booth became available in the main restaurant so we got that. The food was good though most of the specials were already sold out by that time; the waiter was a little quirky (who knows what he was told before we were seated) he several times filled water glasses up to the top so you could not move them without spilling the water and smiled while doing that. Despite how good the food was the bad service totally spoiled that. I could have gone as a walk in for 6:30pm and probably been sat before 7pm - shockingly poor table management and communication with guests. Not a restaurant experience I would rush back to repeat despite the quality...

Very underwhelming.

As others have noted, the parking isn't great here. We went to dinner at 5pm on Saturday night and found a spot but there weren't many spots open. When we left, there were 3-4 cars circling the parking lot waiting for a parking spot.

We had a reservation for 5 (2 adults, 3 kids) and we're seated as soon as we arrived. The restaurant itself is nice inside. Casual open atmosphere so it's a little loud but not disruptive.

Right out of the gate, the bread was as plain and flavorless as you can get. Bertucci's serves better bread/rolls. I'm pretty sure the bruchetta appetizer we ordered was served on the same bread which was part of the reason it was mediocre at best. The bruchetta was basically diced tomatoes on toasted bread. No other seasoning/flavoring that we could find or taste.

We all had ceaser salads before the entree and those were just ok. It looked like they used kale and there was just too much of it and too little romaine. The dressing was also mediocre which just made the whole salad blah.

Nothing was terrible, so we were hopeful that maybe dinner would make up for it. My wife got the eggplant parm that didn't taste good at all and the pasta that came with it was overcooked. My daughter and I each ordered the meat lasagna which wasn't good either. There was hardly any meat on the lasagna and what meat was in there didn't taste good. It was basically noodles with a ton of ricotta cheese. Very disappointing. My other daughter had the ceaser salad for dinner and the toddler had pasta and sauce.

We ordered a couple of tiramisu's for dessert and those were very good. The other desert options they presented also looked appealing. Maybe bakery/dessert is their thing.

All in all, it was a very disappointing trip especially since they had such great reviews on line. It was also very busy while we were there which would make one think they're doing something right. When you spend $200 for a family dinner, I think it's fair to expect the quality of the food to be significantly better than...

Ok, this is actually a 3.5, but that's not an option and I'm feeling generous. I did want to like this restaurant, and the food was fine. But I wasn't blown away, and I did have some issues. I had the gnocchi dish, and while the gnocchi were good and cooked well, the red sauce had a metallic canned taste to it, and the mozzarella was diced into tiny cubes and just thrown on top of the dish. Seriously? There is no universe where the mozzarella shouldn't be put on top and then baked in the oven to melt. This pretty much ruined the meal for me, since I had tiny globs of half-melted mozzarella scattered about, not a consistent melted cheese over the whole dish. Get the basics right, please. Anyway, my husband had the bolognese, and same issue (kind of); the pasta was delicious and cooked perfectly al dente, but the sauce was just "fine". Nothing special. My nephew's pizza was delicious though. I chose four stars instead of three because the service was excellent. Our waitress was lovely, attentive, and checked in continuously. If my family returned, I would...