La Rustica - on Magnolia

There were four of us that went to the golden hour last Thursday. We sat outside and were seated immediately. The waitress greeted us with a smile and then it went downhill from there. We ordered our drinks and that was OK except for it did take her quite a while to pour three glasses of wine and one Arnold Palmer. We had questions about the menu, I asked if with the calamari, could they not put the anchovies into the sauce she said no that that is the sauce for the calamari. I said can’t I just have some marinara sauce we don’t make Marinara sauce she said. I said well what about the Bolognese? She ignored it. So I ended up getting a meatball sandwich. My husband who is gluten intolerant, asked for a Caesar salad without croutons, but with the protein salmon. The other two One got the steak salad the other got the Eggplant with a Caesar salad. Her Caesar salad came up pretty fast. But the rest of the meal did not. My husband and I excused ourselves and went to the restroom inside the restaurant, and as we were coming down the steps, we saw that she was just delivering our meals. We saw that she took the Caesar salad away. Our friend said that it had croutons on it, and there was no salmon. He said for us to go ahead and eat our meal. My hot meatball sandwich was anything, but the cheese had congealed on the top. I tried to find where it was warm it was not. We ate our entire meal before the Caesar salad showed up for my husband. He looked at it and the Romain lettuce with brown. So he ate the salmon and did not eat the lettuce. Now this is waiting for over 25 minutes for the salad to come to our table. Then the gentleman at the bar brought out a Caesar salad with salmon and asked if that was ours. And it looked great, but we already had the other one. Then it took another 20 minutes to get her attention to get the bill so we could pay it and get out. She got my husband in mine right and after three times of telling her that the other two people had separate bills she went ahead and put it on one. Our friend was going to go back to the restaurant later on that day and get it worked out correctly. The other waiter that was waiting on the outside was fast and friendly people that were there way after we got there had eaten their meal and left and we were still trying to get my husband Caesar salad to the table. She ruined our experience, the food was not much better, and I don’t think I’ll be darkening your door again.

We made a reservation and needed a high chair but came to find out they don’t have high chairs… which was interesting. Not sure if that’s because they don’t “encourage” children coming, but at that point we had to decide if we were going to be able to stay. We were going to make it work since it had been a long day and we had 2 kids under 5 that were hungry and cranky. We asked if there was a table outside because they originally were gonna seat us right in the center of the restaurant and we did NOT want to disturb the guests around us. Thankfully they were kind enough to let us get a table outside on their beautiful patio. They even had someone come turn the heat lamps on which they totally didn’t have to because it was so nice out. Once we finally got settled in, our server came to greet us and tell us about the specials. She was very nice. I ordered a bottle of wine and when she came to present it, she told me that she was not confident or comfortable with opening the wine and was struggling. I offered to open it for her. I’m only sharing this part because as a food and beverage manager it is essential that my staff knows how to properly open wine bottles for guests, especially those who are spending a money on a decent bottle of wine. But I wasn’t upset, I just think that should be something that is reconsidered for servers in their training. If she didn’t, then someone else should’ve assisted her. I think if it was someone else dining in that would’ve been off putting. However, she was honest and patient and I appreciated that. As for the food, we enjoyed everything. My husband has severe celiac and it was communicated to us what he could have and he thoroughly enjoyed the bolognese. We had an assortment of entrees that all had great flavor and went great with the Italian wine we had. They were not shy on portions at all and we had plenty of food to take home. The creme brûlée was delicious and our server was attentive. Overall we had a great experience and being outside was super clutch with the kiddos.