Mama Riso's Restaurant — Restaurant in Town of Lake George

Long story short, this place is a poor attempt at a tourist trap trying to make as much money off of you while providing as little food/quality as possible. Just ask the owner. He will admit to it.

I don’t leave reviews for restaurants. Even when I have been unhappy with a place I just don’t go back in the future. This place, however, was so bad that I had to leave a review.

Right off the bat the service was extremely slow. In fairness, I will attribute this to the young waitress assigned to our table. It was obvious that she was new, and clearly had not received any training. She was very nice however and was trying. I was also at a large table with 3 families, which isn’t the easiest thing to manage. So this review has nothing to do with her.

The menu was fairly limited and very pricey. $27 for chicken scarpiella?? But that was listed as their “house special”, so it has to be good right? Bone in roasted chicken, sausage, cherry peppers, in a rich brown sauce. Sounds good at least.

I should have realized we were in for trouble when the house salad arrived. Each salad had some chopped iceberg lettuce, one slice of tomato, two canned black olives, and one slice of cucumber. It was very clear that the restaurant was paying attention to EXACTLY how much food they were giving you. But the salad was decent. Not good, but decent. So we moved on.

Then the dinners arrived. Time to eat the restaurant’s “house special”. The best of what they have to offer. For $27.

What was in my plate was a few small pieces of chicken that were mostly bone. One piece of sausage that was at most an inch long, one canned cherry pepper, and some spaghetti with three canned black olives on top of it. I don’t usually count the items on my plate, but there was so little of everything on the plate, I wanted to make sure I was not overreacting.

Then I looked around to see what everyone else got. One member of the group got linguine with clam sauce, and received a small bowl of pasta with a few clams. Another just ordered tortellini soup. She received a bowl filled barely half way with about 3/4 cup of broth and three pieces of pasta. We thought that this was a mistake and asked for it to be fixed. What was returned was the same three pieces of pasta with another half cup of broth added. A bowl of tortellini Alfredo had 12 pieces for the entire meal.

Ultimately, we told a waitress that we were disappointed. The chef/owner eventually came out to speak with us. We explained our issue with the lack of food on the plate given the high price of the dish. None of us had any problem paying a higher price, so long as we received a good amount of food to go along with that price.

The chef/owner didn’t argue with us. His response was “look where you are, you are in Lake George I have to make my money.” While that explained the high prices, it did not explain how meager the food portions were. He responded to that by saying that “this was what he served” and that he would give us some more spaghetti if we wanted.

By that point it was clear that the both the owner and the restaurant were absolutely sub par and that nobody was going to try and do any better. It was intentional. They will serve you Mediocre food (very little of it) at a very high price, because they just don’t have the skill at cooking or running a restaurant to do any better. You will end up spending a lot of money with very little satisfaction. Eat here...

Three strikes, you’re out! My husband and I went to the restaurant at my suggestion because years ago I had a good experience there. I am embarrassed to say that I was horribly mistaken. New owner? Strike number one, my husband ordered a strip steak Pizziola, we didn’t find out until the bill arrived that they charged him three dollars more for a ribeye. When we questioned the waitress she said they were out of strip steak so they gave him a ribeye. We both have plenty of experience with ordering out, and know the difference. He did not order, or receive a ribeye. Nor was he offered something else. Strike two, I ordered a chicken dish which was described as having bone in chicken. I received chicken wings and pasta! I ate one or two wings, and took the rest home. When the bill came and we noticed that my husband was overcharged, we approach the waitress who said she would adjust the bill. When she gave us back the bill with our credit card charge, it was higher than before she adjusted it. We questioned her about that, and she told us that there was a surcharge for using your credit card! When I went back to the table and mentioned that to my husband, A nearby patron who claim to be a friend of the owner said that it’s posted on the door. We looked at the posting on the door on the way out, and there is nothing about a surcharge for using a credit card, in fact it says there is a discount for paying with cash! Again three strikes, you’re out! See photo for my “bone-in” chicken. Oh, and btw, I called the restaurant to speak with the manager, our waitress was put on the phone. She claimed to be the owner, I told her that I didn’t believe that our waitress was he owner, so she put her husband on the phone, who told me he was the “chef” and told me that he gave me half a chicken! He swore they didn’t even serve chicken wings, then suggested I call my lawyer. I hardly ever give reviews, good or bad, but this guy is unbelievable. He is stealing from patrons, and giving our area a bad name. Mama Riso, if there is such a person, would roll over in her grave if she knew her name was being defiled in...

This is the last place you should go to eat while visiting Lake George. Between our rude waitress who is the owners wife, to the actual owners attitude when I called to fix my issue, to the overpriced inedible food, this restaurant failed all of my expectations. Throughout our dinner with my party of 15 (it was empty when we arrived at 5:30pm), the waitress had an attitude when we asked questions regarding the menu, prices and recommendations. We saw her 3 times throughout our time there, our busboy was attentive and took care of her slack to serve us. She finally took our orders after sitting for an hour as well as forgetting to take my sisters order. The chicken parm was barely edible to eat. The cheese was hardened over the chicken, which was also too tough to even cut with flavorless watered pasta sauce. The fettuccine alfredo had chicken that tasted as if it was premade perdue chicken in a bag at the store. My check was split between 3 cards, the waitress put on our receipts a suggested tip of 20% for each and only became friendly when she handed us our checks to go. I took a picture of our receipts and sure enough as we looked at our banks today this restaurant adjusted their tips and took $15+ from all of our cards. When we called to have this corrected, she began yelling and said she would not give us our money back forcing us to report this as fraud as they took a total of almost $60+ from us without our permission. This place doesn’t make enough business so the business they do have, they try to charge every penny they can get. A fee for using card, a sharing plate fee of $9, etc. Besides the obvious outdated condition of the restaurant and it’s mold smell, do yourself a favor and stick to any other restaurant in Lake George. The reviews on this place should’ve been my warning but I tried to give...