Gallo's Kitchen & Bar — Restaurant in Upper Arlington

We arrived at 6:30PM on a Tuesday without reservations for my husband's birthday dinner. We were lucky to get a two-top in the middle of the walkway that was a leftover table from a bigger party that had to combine other tables.

We had our drink order taken and then we weren't checked on again for about 12-15 minutes. We ordered an appetizer and our meals at that time. The appetizer (two meatballs) took about 25 minutes to come out, and they were delicious. The dinner came out about 30 minutes later - the seafood creole with rice, and a cheeseburger with fries. I wanted the creole chicken sandwich, but they were out of chicken for any meal, so a burger was the next option.

One of the mussels was hard as a rock and actually pained my husband to bite into. My burger, ordered medium-well, came out and looked great. I put the toppings on it and lightly pressed my bun down so it wasn't huge to bite into, and the burger spewed blood. I took a bite anyway just to check it out, and it was pink most of the way through; probably between rare & medium-rare. I took two more bites, hopeful that maybe it was just a fluke, but it got more bloody as I continued.

I stopped eating the burger at that time, and my husband kept it as leftovers for lunch (he likes more rare burgers), though I did nicely let the server know of my concerns. We were at the restaurant for about two hours which seemed quite long for a Tuesday night and a party of two. The server did offer a free dessert, which we appreciated, but declined. We were ready to get home at that point and aren't the people looking for free items.

Overall, I would say the environment was very cramped and possibly understaffed due to long wait times, both for server communication and food from the kitchen. We've been once before and it wasn't like this, but that was also a visit that was later in the night for a few drinks. I'd probably not return, as we considered the food mediocre and the wait times seemed excessive for a burger and a...

I want to start off by saying our meal was good, but that’s about it. The restaurant was on a wait. We were seated at the bar and a lady comes over to take our drink order. She takes my drink order and she walked away before asking for the second drink order. She never brings my drink. Then our server comes over. We re-order drinks and our meal. The side salad I order comes out right away, but then we sit and see everyone else getting their meals around us, even those who order after us. Our server never addressed it, but a bartender comes over and asks us if we got our food, after almost an hour had passed since we ordered. We tell her no. She walks away. Our server comes and explains that the BOH lost the ticket and they are making it now. That’s fine, accidents happen but then we continued to wait, meanwhile watching multiple to go orders and food orders come out, after we were told our food would be up next. I think the chef was the one that actually brought our food out, but there was no apology from him. We finished our food and then just sat there with the empty plates in front of us, while our server talked with other patrons. At this point, it was 9:45pm and we had arrived at the restaurant at 8pm. There was no sense of urgency from our server to take care of us. We even had to ask him for check! He did offer us a free dessert, which was appreciated, but overall I don’t think there was enough done to rectify the situation. We got a $7 free dessert for a $65 meal that was over an hour late. I also expected a...

I can't even explain how perfect my meal was. I've had countless vodka sauce pastas around the country, and this has the be the best one I've ever had. The garlic, the bacon, the slightest, just enough tomato, just enough cream. Roasted chicken for some flavor depth. Every bite was an explosion of flavor. 10/10 perfection.

The chicken parmigiana was also incredible...breaded chicken breast cutlets have a tendency to dry out, not this one. Exploding with juice. And the Alfredo was the perfect amount of butter to cream to cheese ratio. This is what I'm looking for every time I order an Alfredo, and it's hardly ever this good. They managed to capture these flavors without feeling like you're eating a ton of grease/cream/heavy oil, either.

The gumbo was as good as you'll find in NOLA, And the roasted polenta was a nice way to start the meal without a heavy and fried appetizer.

Overall, perfect food...and it's not often I say that. This place holds a candle and exceeds most of the high end white-tablecloth Italian restaurants you'll find around the city, for a significantly cheaper price. Compliments...