Tavern Pizza & Pasta Grill — Restaurant in West Des Moines

Used to love this place. Today was disappointing. Our appetizer never came. Food came and waitress asked if we needed anything. We said yes, our onion rings. She asked if we still wanted them. We said that we did thinking maybe they’d be a priority since they had been forgotten. My son loves the onion rings and that was the main thing he wanted. Waited half hour. By the time they came we were done with our meal. Waitress said she wouldn’t charge so wasn’t a big deal at that point. We’d just take them home for our son to eat later. Had to ask for refills few times. Got our bill and not only were the onion rings on the bill but also a $16 pizza we didn’t order. We didn’t even order any pizza. My husband went to say something as she walked up and she snapped “I know! I know! My manager has to take it off and he’s a little busy right now!” Didn’t even give us a chance to tell her about the pizza. She was so snotty to us and it’s not like we were being rude or even acting upset about the onion rings or poor service. She asked if we wanted another copy of the bill once manager fixed it. Told her yes because wanted to be sure pizza was off that she didn’t give us a chance to mention. As she’s walking away she says in a sarcastic tone, “Of course you do! I’ll get right on that!” Brings “fixed” bill back and my husband tells her we never ordered the pizza that was still on it. She brings back the correct bill, we give her credit card, she brings back and sets on table and walks away mumbling something about having a nice day. Didn’t get a chance to get a box for the onion rings we couldn’t eat. Told my son we’d have to forget about them because heaven forbid we bother her again! It was Mother’s Day and all other mothers got flowers including the ladies behind us that are obviously friends of hers because she had plenty of time to talk to them about making plans to get together soon. I get the place was busier than normal but it was by no means packed and there was no wait to be seated. If your waitresses can’t handle being busier than normal AND being nice at the same time then maybe they shouldn’t...

Today is Sunday, October 21, 2018. My husband, daughter, and I stopped into this restaurant because we had some old neighbors that had told us about this place. How it was so good and had other things besides pizza. So after the little bit of shopping around that we did, we were trying to decide on where to get a bite to eat. We had a few options in our head, then finally decided to try something new and we were in the area, so we stopped here. We walk in, very nice and clean and NOT BUSY at all. We got seated right away and got our drinks right away. I'll just skip all the tiny details. We waited about 10-15 minutes for our server to come to our table and take our order. She explained on how she was so behind because of her other tables. Which was only a few others and they had been there for a while. So my husband and I give her a break and we were just hoping that the food would be better than the service and hoping that she could turn herself around. Nope, that didn't happen. Our food was just okay....my husband and I are not hard to please at all. We know good food and good service when we see it and we know bad food and bad service when we see it. Simple as that. I used to be a server. Heck, I went to school for Culinary Arts, so pleasing me isn't that hard, because I GET IT! I understand how the business works and what goes on, etc etc. I used to be a bad tipper and that was before I was ever a server. Once I started serving, I tipped a lot better. Today was not the day. Today there was no tip involved because our experience was bad through-out the time we were there. We should of ordered the pizza, but we both were not in the mood for that. Maybe in the far future we will try them again, but not a long time. When we got the bill, we paid and left. I still stacked everything up to make it easier for our server to clean, but I went to my low and didn't tip because our server was horrible. I usually leave some what of a tip even if things don't go great through-out our time at a restaurant, but this was...

I'd honestly been looking forward to trying this place out, as they have food everyone in our family enjoys. While I did like the food, it was a bit disappointing, for reasons I'll detail below.

I split a large pizza with our youngest son, and I thought this pizza was very good. We got a half Canadian bacon, half cheese (he will only eat cheese pizza). The biggest issue with this was that we ran into problems with meat being on several of the slices that should have only been cheese, so we ran into problems with his pickiness and an unwillingness to eat the pizza as a result. After we got the pizza home and he ate some pieces as leftovers once we were able to get the meat off his slices, he enjoyed it. While I understand it is sometimes difficult to keep toppings from one half of a pizza off the other, there were more Canadian bacon bits on the cheese half than one would reasonably expect.

My older son got a cheeseburger, and it is extremely rare for him to not enjoy this meal but he said he didn't like the bun. At first I suspected this was because it was a different kind of bun than he's used to. However, after we got the leftovers home, my wife discovered that they had attempted to toast the bun, but had severely overdone the bottom part, burning it quite badly. With a new bun, he liked the burger as well.

My wife got the pasta dinner, and she enjoyed her food. There's not too much to say about this one, it was tasty and well cooked.

I will say that they are currently very understaffed. There was a single waitress handling all the tables for the majority of the time we were there, and while she did an excellent job given the circumstances, this did impact wait times a bit.

Overall, I would love to try eating here again, just being aware of some of the potential difficulties we might encounter, as both my wife and I enjoyed the food. We'd just need to make sure that the kids' food was prepared in a way that they'd...