North Italia — Restaurant in Upper Merion Township

My family are recent repeat customers of North Italia. We have been met with exceptional food and service every time until today, which is why this review is being redeemed to two stars. We dined in today for lunch at 1 p.m. to celebrate the birthday of my brother’s girlfriend and were extremely disappointed with both the food and service today. First of all, the service was extremely poor. Our waitress was kind but inattentive and smelled strongly of cigarettes halfway through our meal. We are all vegetarians in my family, and have had very good experiences at North Italia in the past, as it is a scratch kitchen where they are able to customize requests. The options themselves are minimal for vegetarians without heavy customization, so when we were told that the only pasta dish - tortelloni al pomodoro - had already run out by 1 p.m., we were extremely disappointed and were not provided with any recommendations or options at all to replace this dish we were highly anticipating. The kitchen itself seemed to be struggling to customize dishes as per usual and required a lot of discussion in order to get any dish correct. We were served multiple dishes that clearly lacked flavor, effort, or correct execution. Out of all, I was mostly upset that we could not provide the experience we anticipated to my brother’s girlfriend, who was celebrating her 24th birthday today. We have been previously met with stellar meals and experiences within the last two weeks - until today. Not sure of names off the top of my head, but we had a very kind African American man serve us on July 22nd proceeding a lunch with an Asian American man who served us on July 14th. People like these should be praised for their kindness, effort, and ability to go above and beyond for customers. Please be wary that your dining experience here may be vastly different every time and to not expect that your meal will come out remotely the same in taste and quality, as the care of the kitchen seems to change on a day...

I can not give any star to either food or service since I did not have the chance to taste the food nor have the chance to be served. We arrived last night Saturday October 28 for dinner. We asked if a table is available for three people and a toddler. We were told that a table just became available and it will take a few minutes to clean. As we were waiting, another family arrived and asked for a table. They were told by the hostess that the only table available was high top table. They agreed to be seated at a high top table. When our table was ready, we were escorted by the hostess only to realize that the very exact family that was just seated at a high top table helped themselves to our table. The hostess was rather confused. As we were trying to figure out what was happening, the manger came and told us that he told them to sit at our table. He said this is first come first serve restaurant. He was rather rude and unprofessional. He insisted that they came before us and they just requested to change the table to normal height table. He was not engaged with his people whose job was to seat people. He never took the time to verify the situation with his own staff Obviously, I had to argue the point with him, but he was rather un-cooperative. He made us feel that we are the problem. When I pressed him to get us a table as we were promised, he said we will seat you when another table become available. I said how long will that be, he said I do not know. He was acting as he owns the place and my life depends on his mercy to give us a table. I said at that point - is it true that part of your job is to estimate the wait time to your costumers. He said "then in this case the time is never" He practically told us to hit the road. People with such behavior should not be in a hospitality business. I wander where he was trained to be the hospitality business, and how he ends up being a manger in such a respectable place like this. ...

We went to this restaurant last Sunday because my husband was craving Italian food, it was our first time and it looked like a nice place from the outside but believe me if i could give it -5 stars i would, first of all the girl who is supposed to be the receptionist who seats people looked beyond ridiculous and disgusting she was wearing an extremely small jumpsuit that was pulled all the way up her behind with no underwear and she had very long disgusting looking armpit hair sticking out from under her arms through her tiny light pink jumpsuit, so after overcoming our initial disgust we decided to not stop much at it and wait in line while they seated us with over half the restaurant empty we still waited over 10 minutes while the beautiful receptionist strolled around in her fabulous outfit and smelly pits. Upon sitting down the table next to us wasn't cleaned yet and our silverware had smudges which i just simply wiped with the napkin, so we sat looked at the menu, discussed what we will have, decided on what we will have and well over 20 minutes passed, their cool waiter boys strolling by doing nothing or topping other people's water cups and no one came to provide us with any service whatsoever, people who sat down after us have been greeted with nice cold water cups while we just sat there watching the hip cool waiter boys walk by completely ignoring us, we decided to yet give it more time and wait for another 5 minutes to bring our dining experience up to almost an hour of pointless waiting then we decided to just leave. Thank you guys for wasting our time and properly treating your customers also well done on your hiring process/standards and excellent service. Hopefully this place closes soon after people realize it's worth it to wait an extra minute or two in line for the cheesecake factory. Oh and a word to the owner; your restaurant is an absolute dumpster and you...