My boyfriend and I drive by Tonelli's constantly on 611. It looks really nice from the street, it has nice curb appeal. He told me months ago that he and his office ordered take out from there and that it was way overpriced and not that good, but I wanted to try it out for myself actually dining in.
We arrived around 9:00pm on a Friday, the bar was almost full and the dining area had many openings, yet the hostess still had us wait about 5-10 minutes for a table? When we were seated, no waitress came over to us for about 8 minutes. A little after getting out drink orders, she places something on the table and walks away. My boyfriend and I looked at each other in shock! Did she just do that..... are those really paper plates and plastic silverware sitting there????
We honestly could not believe that a "nice" restaurant/pizza pub was using paper plates and plastic silverware! I mean, come on...... this is actually a nice pizza restaurant, and the presentation of their food is horrific! They bring their fries out in foil like you're at the amusement park and their sandwiches in baskets like you're at Friendly's. They definitely need to spend the extra few bucks and invest in real silverware and plates. So, that paying customers like us can actually have a nice meal, and be able to cut their stromboli without their plastic knife breaking and eating cardboard from the plate.
I was so perplexed and annoyed by this, so I decided to ask our waitress nicely if there was actually some kind of theory behind the owners using paper and plastic. ?? She replied by saying, "We are just sooo busy that at times we have a 45 min. wait. We only have 2 dishwashers and it just makes more sense to throw the plates and silverware away." This was actually pathetic that that was the reasoning.... in other words they are too cheap and too lazy. Hmmm, that's weird though, because when we were there between 9-9:45 on a Friday night - they were not busy at all!
Then how does every other sit-down restaurant do it with a lot longer waits than 45 minutes!!
This was a ridiculous experience and we are actually insulted that we paid $30 for a stromboli, salad and a chicken sandwich and were given paper plates, plastic silverware and last but not least - they had NOTHING to pass the salad out with, didn't even give us salad tongs!
Needless to say, we will never be wasting our money here again. Sometimes, I suppose you do have to listen to the old saying - looks are deceiving!
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