An Italian Affair — Restaurant in Town of Massena

My three-star rating is based on service, not food quality. The food here is excellent. We frequently order delivery, but unfortunately, the cooks mess up our order at least 50% of the time. My husband cannot eat mozzarella, but when he specifically requests no mozzarella cheese, they ignore this request most of the time. If you order extra of any ingredient, you will pay for it, but probably not get it. They also have sent us meals or desserts that were missing key ingredients; for example, I have twice had to call them because they forgot to send the dipping sauce with their Cannoli Shells & Dip dessert. We’ve had to call to complain about their mistakes so frequently that they now hand the phone directly to their manager, who has gotten snippy with us, and asked us why we keep ordering from them. Really? If they weren’t the only game in town, and if their food didn’t taste good (when they get it right), believe me, we would order from a different restaurant. We didn’t need to hear the manager whine about his staffing problems. That’s not our problem; it’s his job to make sure that customers get what they ordered/paid for. While I wouldn’t discourage people from placing orders with Italian Affair (only because their food is delicious), I would recommend that you carefully check your order as soon as it is delivered, and call them right away if there are issues. If they screw anything up (which they probably will), insist on a discount or a replacement for your food. Don’t let them give you excuses and sob stories. You pay for quality, and you deserve to get exactly what you ordered.

Update: Had to change my rating from 3 stars to 1 star. Not even 5 minutes after I posted my original review, the manager (or maybe he’s the owner; he never identified himself, which is also unprofessional) called my husband’s cell phone and demanded to speak with me about my review. He was extremely defensive, and attempted to shift the blame for the restaurant’s poor service from himself and his employees to US (apparently, customers shouldn’t complain about mistakes or leave honest reviews on Google or Yelp.) He whined about not being able to keep good help, stating that employees were quitting to go work at McDonalds or Burger King for $1/hour more. Here’s a thought: maybe it’s not so much the difference in pay, maybe employees are leaving An Italian Affair due to poor management? Then, this man had the audacity to tell us that it was “time to part ways” and to “take our business elsewhere.” Seriously? His restaurant screws up, but WE’RE the bad guys? When this guy was asking my husband if he had ever worked in the food industry, I should have grabbed the phone and told him that apparently HE had no experience in the food industry, either, as he clearly has never learned how to treat his customers with respect! But hey, maybe he’s doing something right, since Italian Affair obviously has so much business that they can afford to chase away loyal paying customers just because they asked that their orders be completed correctly. Good to know! Dude’s bad attitude will save me tons of money on food delivery, and will eliminate our frustration from having to call frequently with complaints. Their loss, not ours. Bottom line: if you are not concerned about service, go ahead and order from them; you probably will enjoy their food. However, if you are placing an order online, I would recommend NOT clicking on the options to add or eliminate ingredients to your meal. They will likely screw it up, and charge you for extras that they didn’t provide. And whatever you do, don’t call to inform them of their mistakes; the manager/owner isn’t mature enough to handle constructive criticism, and he’ll likely send...

First they should change the name of the restaurant from An Italian Affair to An Unhappy Affair. Placed an order for 2 Lasagna's, 1 Pepperoni Roll at 830 pm. The waitress never wrote anything down, which was the first red flag. At about 910 pm, the waitress said the pepperoni roll was ready, if we wanted it now, the lasagna was going to be a few minutes. 2nd red flag. We stated that we would wait for all the food at once. This was the last time we seen our waitress!!!! About 920 pm, the head waitress/ manager came to our table and said sorry for the wait, were pushing our kitchen staff as hard as possible. 3rd red flag. Finally at 935 pm the head waitress/ manager came out and said our lasagna fell on the floor, but we could order something else after waiting for 1 hour and 5 minutes. Our lasagna never fell on the floor, the waitress or the cooks messed everything up. In the 1 hr and 5 minutes, I was there, I observe all the kitchen/ waitresses having a good ole time joking and high fiving each other. I have no idea what they told the other customers who sat down the same time as we did, because none of them were eating also. I give this restaurant, 5 stars for a poorly trained and unsupervised staff. They were great at being dishonest, and a diservice to the customers who waste there time and money there. I have never been mad for poor service, but for the first time in my life I was one upset customer for the lies and made up excuses. If you messed up on it, don't lie, own it. People make mistakes, but dont waste my family's time on lies. Once again please change your restaurants name to An UNHAPPY AFFAIR!! One thing is for sure this Italian will never go back there, and they will never get my hard earned money. This review is based on service, I never seen my food. But the diet coke you served in a bottle was 5 stars....

Food is great but the wait time for delivery is horrible. I've always put up with it since, like I said the food is good, but tonight they went above and beyond to add insult to injury.

When I got confirmation of my meal it estimated 90 minutes for deliver or roughly 1hr and a half. After that time had elapsed I decided to call the restaurant to confirm my order was still coming since my family and I were pretty hungry by then. Kept getting a 'busy' message from the operator which made me think they had disconnected their phone. I tried calling to verify my order and delivery status for 30 minutes before the wife and I decided it was too much of a wait and we had to get something else. Mind you, this is now 2hrs from when our order was confirmed and we only ordered two sandwiches with sides, nothing complicated.

While I was warming up our vehicle to go get dinner elsewhere, the delivery driver pulled in and we FINALLY received our order 2hrs15mins instead of 90minutes as was estimated. All of this I could've accepted if communicated but they never answered the phone.

When I asked the driver how come it was SO late, he said they were trying the best the could to get the food out and they were running behind. When I asked why couldn't they communicate that since I had been calling for 30 minutes with no answer he confirmed that they were not answering the phones due to being behind. Which is unacceptable. No "sorry for your inconvenience", no "we can make it right next time", no "call us for an opportunity to right this"... NOTHING.

I've put up with the high estimated wait times before and even several late deliveries but today was the last straw. I DO NOT recommend getting food delivered from this establishment nor will I be using their services...