Gregorio's Trattoria — Restaurant in Virginia

First, the acceptable. The garlic knots were good. The shrimp scampi pasta was fine. The penne vodka flavor was fine (even though the texture suffered mightily from sitting under a heat lamp for ca 20 minutes while a "mishap" was being corrected with the rest of our order). Our server was friendly, and apologetic as the dinner descended. The restaurant is attractive and comfortable. The bathrooms were clean.

Here is the not so fine. The restaurant was nearly empty at 6:45 on a Saturday night. Despite that, the kitchen seemed unable to produce food. It took ca 15 minutes for the mozzarella sticks appetizer to come out. $16.99 for four small breaded mozzarella sticks and some cold marinara sauce. The salad came next--the caesar dressing was fine, but the lettuce was limp and soaked as if had been sitting for a while. We ordered a 14" New York style cheese pizza. The only thing that prevents calling this "New York style pizza" from being false advertising is that Riker's Island Prison is in New York, and they sometimes serve pizza instead of nutraloaf. The pizza came in an aluminum foil tray on top of the normal pizza tray, was cut into extremely irregular sizes, and most pieces were not cut thru. We had to ask the server to take it out of the aluminum tray to even get it on a plate. The taste was somewhere between Tombstone and Red Baron. (Oddly enough, the only other family in the restaurant had a pizza that looked fine.)

Twenty minutes and two excuses later, we were served two entrees--the penne vodka and shrimp scampi pasta described above. It took a full 15 minutes for the final entree to appear, so one of our party had to sit without food while the others ate before theirs got cold. The missing entree was supposed to be Spaghetti con Polpette, which translates to Spaghetti with Meatballs ($20.99). There were no meatballs. Someone from the kitchen delivered the dish, and escaped before we finished the search for the meatballs. When our server came by, we told him to take it back and take it off our bill. We wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. He returned and said the manager apologized, took the dish off of the bill, and gave us a 15% discount. So that paid for the four overpriced mozzarella sticks. The server also offered us free desserts, which we declined. All fine, but in no way fixed a ruined birthday dinner, especially for out of town family we do not see often enough.

I felt sorry for the server, as he was put in a very awkward situation. The restaurant was nearly empty. The manager should have come themselves. If the manager had come by, I would have given them this feedback in person, but since they did not, I am...

Let me begin by saying, the food was great and our waiter Joe was attentive and helpful. However it STOPS there. I booked a dinner for over 20 in their back room. They asked for a $100 deposit to hold the date. That seemed reasonable. When I arrived at the restaurant I spoke with the manager Chris. I explained that everyone would need separate checks. Therefore the easiest thing would be to credit the deposit and give everyone a separate check. The deposit was paid by a single individual. Chris said this would be fine. To make it easy for them, I printed menus for each participant so they could circle their order, put their name on the menu and that would make it easier and less confusing for the waiter. Dinner was fine although 2 people waited a ridiculous amount of time for their dinners. Some in the group had already finished by the time their meals arrived. Here is where the problem started. It seems Chris left and a new manager was working. He insisted the $100.00 deposit had to be credited to each order. This was ridiculous that they were giving each order a $5.88 credit when they had not put out the original deposit. I explained to him what the arrangements were. Rudely, he told me they did not do that. Now I understand when it is a single check, but there were at least 20 of us trying to pay and leave. After much discussion, he agreed that he would credit the original card. He did this and proceeded to insist the remaining $70+ would be given on a restaurant gift card. How outrageous! Perhaps instead of letting them know 20+ folks were coming in for dinner, we should have just shown up. I plan dinners for other groups at other restaurants and have never had this kind of thing happen. It took over an hour for us all to get our bills straightened out and get us out the door. For many, a perfectly enjoyable evening had been ruined. I assured everyone that I had made the proper arrangements, but I still looked I’ll prepared.

To be fair, if you asked if this is a good restaurant, I would say definitely. Just don’t take a large party there. Unfortunately the feed back from the group was not positive on this experience. I would think management would be a little more cooperative when we brought a group of 20 in on a slow Tuesday night. Giving the $100 credit took no money out of the restaurant. Actually, they held that money for a few weeks. I hope for Joe that everyone left him the tip he deserved and were not aggravated enough to just pay their bill. ...

The sad part is that I hyped this place up to my family. I hyped it up because every single person at my job and at my gym said this restaurant is amazing. So i decided to give it a shot since I am a local nova foodie blogger. Hands down the worst service I've ever experienced. Sat down and got our waters along with the undercooked garlic knots. Took a bite and was worried I'd get sick from the soggy dough. Then we ordered an appetizer. Worst calamari I've ever had. It was an extremely greasy and soggy batter and there was barely any calamari underneath all that mess. Then came the entrees. Either the entree was completely submerged in thick cream sauce to the point you had to scoop away half of the plate to get to the noodles orrrr the exact opposite...there was barely any sauce or flavor to go with your noodles. Then I figured the ravioli would be top notch...and when i split them open, all you saw was a dried out stuffing that looked as if it had been microwaved days ago and then reserved. But the service was the worst part. We never got asked if everything was okay or if we would like more water. We kept looking around for our waitress but she never even got near our table again. The restaurant was barely full of guests the entire night mind you. Also, the used bread plates, appetizer plates, and empty wine glasses, and then entree plates...all sat on the super small table the entire time. There was no room for you to even rest your arms barely. Any restaurant I go to, the employees offer us more water, ask us for anything else, and quickly remove all dishes from the table when they notice the customer is done with it or if they notice the empty plates are piling up making it uncomfortable for the customer. We sat around looking for our waitress so we could at least ask her to clear the table but she was roaming around elsewhere. Look, this place employs nice people don't get me wrong but the staff needs to be trained way better than this. The dishes are definitely not worth their price on the menu. I am extremely saddened by this experience and that I brought my family here. They were in town for the holidays and I told them hey let's go to this amazing restaurant in reston that everyone raves about. Will not be returning here unfortunately and will just stick to the other italian restaurants riddled...