Dolce Vita Italian Bistro — Restaurant in Tucson

After having had this restaurant recommended by several associates and reading the warm reviews on the internet, I decided to take my GF there for her birthday. All I can say is what a complete and utter failure this restaurant was! However, there is one exception and that is if you are only interested in eating the meat of the oso buco which was good, not exceptional, but ok.

Let's start with the salad. In a word, bland and tasteless. I had requested the Italian dressing and what I got tasted like water mixed with a little olive oil. Absolutely no flavor whatsoever. To compensate for this, I loaded up on salt, pepper and parmesan cheese in copious quantities to try to make the salad edible. Then there was the side dish broccoli for my GF. Extremely overcooked, tasteless with no herbs and no type of dressing or flavor. Bland as well. Now let's talk about their bread. As far as white bread goes, it was warm. They served olive oil and with pepper to dip the bread in. I had requested from the waitress some fresh crushed garlic to put in the olive oil to dip the bread in. What I received instead was straight out of the Costco dried herb container. No fresh crushed garlic available at this Italian restaurant ... figure that? I had requested spaghetti with meatballs. I had also requested to substitute one sausage for one of the meatballs, but was told "Oh no, we can't do that" despite me offering to pay additional for it. How did the spaghetti and meatballs taste? Like something straight out of a jar. By this time, I had asked to speak to the owner or chef. Again, the waitress looked at me with an incredulous expression and neither the chef nor the owner appeared. This speaks volumes for this restaurant. Would I recommend it to anyone? Absolutely not! Would I ever go there again? Not a chance! Do I suggest you go try it? Only if you want bad food, bad service and like to waste hard earned money! ...

Showed up for dinner about 5pm nobody in dining area except older gentlemen (owner?) He just sat there staring which was odd, order lasagna asked if it was made fresh daily the older women said yes so I order it, get my lasagna start to eat I questioned its freshness after a couple bites then I get towards the middle take a bite and I ended up w a mouth full of cold lasagna with a chunk of meat that tasted spoiled I spit out what I could then told the waitress I cant eat this a d didn't want it , a couple minutes later after microwaving she shows up at the table with the lasagna I returned , I once again told I do not want it so she takes it away I proceed eating my small salad, bill time !she still tried to charge me full price for the lasagna , I told her I am not paying for that, she says you ate half takes ticket back adjust it new bill had beverage fee and a $5 charge for the salad which is included w the meal I explained to her that will never return and im filing a complaint with the heath department, she asked why I say you served cold spoiled lasagna left establishment. Next morning sure enough nausea and chills upset stomach, my advise is stay away from this place they are NOT practicing good food safety protocols, filing complaint with pima...

This place and its owner, is an INSULT to italian culture! Most people enjoy legitimate Italian food, so do I!! Dolce Vita Ristorante Terrazza has an astounding 4.6 star rating so that is what is to be expected, yes? I ordered a turkey panini & to my knowledge, there are 3 types of panini bread, which was what I was expecting. Well, when I was served a sandwich made with average white sandwich bread, (untoasted/ungrilled) I asked the server about it, which told me that since not many people order panini's, they no longer carry the proper panini bread since it will go bad from lack of use/sale. I recieved no refund, discount, nor apology, so I told the owner my discomfort with being mislead, well.. I just got a crook of an owner that is seemingly at best Italian, telling me, "panini means sandwich, thankyou, have a nice day." As a language barrier, refused to engage in any further dialogue other than a farewell. I have never been so unsatisfied in so many ways with so many aspects of food service...