Pietro Cucina Italiana — Restaurant in Town of Smithtown

We recently moved into the area and were looking forward to trying Pietro. We are very unlikely to return. I do not write many reviews. This time I must. The quality of the food was good and if it had not been for the terrible service I would recommend this as a place to try. The poor service began immediately upon walking in at 6:58 for a 7:00 reservation. We stood at the host/hostess desk for more than 5 minutes before anyone acknowledged that we were there. The host/head waiter eventually took my name and checked the reservation and said the table would be ready “right away.” We ordered drinks at the bar and began to wait. And wait. At 7:30, I located the head waiter and inquired, and was again told “a few minutes.” At 7:45, I asked the bartender if she could find out what was happening with our table. She spoke to the head waiter and said “a few minutes.” We were finally called over at 8:05 and the head waiter pointed to a table – did not escort us, simply pointed across the dining room to a table that was at that moment being set. Well, okay, perhaps escorting us to the table is outside the scope of his job, though it seemed a bit strange to me especially coupled with the lack of any greeting at all when we arrived. Nevertheless, we went to our table and stood by while the staff completed the setting. We finally sat, an hour and 15 minutes after the time of our reservation. We were given menus, we ordered wine and then it was time to order. The head waiter made an appearance to take our orders. I selected an appetizer from the specials menu, followed by a pasta dish, also from the specials. This dish was described as tagliatelle with lobster in a sherry cream sauce. The rest of our party ordered. We enjoyed the appetizer which was well prepared and well presented. When our entrees arrived, I was in conversation and distracted; by the time I looked down at my dish, the wait staff had left. I discovered that instead of pasta with lobster in a sherry cream sauce, I was given tagliatelle with a heavy meat and tomato sauce. Clearly not what I ordered. I called the waitress over and told her that the dish was wrong to which she replied – “Oh, yes, we ran out of the special.” I was somewhat surprised at the matter of fact way she said it, as she had given me no indication before that they had run out of my selection. As I was obviously stunned and not happy, she called over the head waiter, explained the problem. The head waiter was equally unconcerned. He simply said they ran out of the special so they sent the other tagliatelle dish. He acknowledged that he “probably should have told” me. No apology was offered. Now, I am generally not unreasonable and I understand that mistakes can happen. This was not a “mistake” in the sense that the waiter ordered the wrong dish or the chef prepared the wrong dish. This was a deliberate substitution of my selection for something else without any notice at all to me Had I been told that they had run out of the dish I would have selected another - but it would have been a dish of my choosing not theirs. To further compound it, the waitress later asked for coffee orders. I requested an espresso. They must have run out of espresso as well, because it never arrived. The lack of any recognition of my dissatisfaction and any sense of responsibility for changing my order reflects poorly on the management and the staff. It was obvious that providing good service and a quality experience at the restaurant was way down on their list of priorities. We were ignored upon arrival and then were ill served through the course of our meal. This is a shame because the food really is quite good. Pietro needs someone at the desk to greet every party and to manage reservations and tables, they need to learn not to overbook the restaurant and the need to learn that apologizing for and trying to correct mistakes would go a long way toward...

Would not recommend. The food was terrible and the service was atrocious. We sat for our 6:30PM reservation promptly and right away started a terrible dining experience. Our server Steve finally came over after waiting about 20minutes and took half of party of 6 drink order's and proceeded to walk away. After coming back and placing the 3 wine glasses down with the bottle he tried to walk away and we had to catch him so the rest of us could order a cocktail and soft drink. After waiting another 25minutes the rest of the table received their drinks. We put our appetizer and dinner orders in and waited....and waited...and waited.... After about 90 minutes of waiting from when we put our order in we walked in to the restaurant because our server Steve never once came over to check on us or give an update and questioned where was our food? We were dismissed and told "Pietro will be over to talk to you the kitchen is short staffed tonight" and the staff left to go attend to other tables. We questioned two more times after waiting 2.5 hrs for our food and again we were dismissed and told that Pietro himself will be over to speak with us...Again nor Pietro or Steve were anywhere to be found (We assumed as we mentioned to the busser that we wanted to cancel our order that if they did not speak to us they could still get the dinners out so they could charge us). Finally after waiting 3 hrs (it was after 9:30PM) we received our food. Half of the table ordered the special which the menu stated Tagliatelle with shrimp and scallops. The dishes were placed with no scallops. When we questioned Pietro why it was missing half of the dish he said that the menu was printed incorrectly and our server should have told us that the dish did not come with scallops....well HE DIDNT. One of the dishes were sent back and we later noticed after paying that Pietro still charged us for it and the rest of the dishes were awful! no taste, bland and the steak was very undercooked. We left annoyed and hungry. I have sent an email to the restaurant as well as contacted them on their social media accounts to speak about the poor experience and they have ignored all of my messages. Save yourself the headache and try another local restaurant in the area. I attached screen shots of my attempts to reach out with no response and they blocked me on their social media account when trying to...

My husband and I went for our anniversary on a Monday night. The service was friendly without being too friendly, but not overly attentive to detail - the prosciutto, Buffalo mozzarella, and melon tapas special came without the mozzarella. Our server did not seem to notice; perhaps she brought it from the kitchen before it was fully plated. People make mistakes, no big deal. The portion of prosciutto was generous for the price ($12.95) and I didn’t want to mar our night out with a complaint so I didn’t say anything. The meatball appetizer was delicious but barely warm. My pappardelle bolognese was rave-worthy and my husband enjoyed his salmon so all good there. We inquired about desserts, which is a list given verbally by the servers. It’s a nice touch since some are made in-house and some are imported, so the list likely changes frequently; however, the server rattled off a list without any details about the desserts themselves, which was a shame because there were two of six items we didn’t recognize. Had they sounded appealing we may have ordered dessert, but we were not in the mood for the other generic options (tiramisu, panna cotta, cannoli, and tartufo). No, we didn’t ask what the others were, but between the two of us we have about 30 combined years of experience in hospitality and agreed that we would’ve offered up brief descriptions as part of the list since there is no printed menu. Finally, the website advertises 1/2 glasses of wine along with the tapas menu, but we were charged full price. We’re not cheapskates and didn’t want to look the part so again, we didn’t say anything, thinking maybe the special is only available at the bar, but if that’s the case it should be reflected on the website. All in all, it wasn’t a terrible experience and there were some highlights, but Pietro fell short of our...