East Side Mario's

Reviews

• SR

  Shawn Rickard

  2 days ago
  1.0
  Wow. What a mis managed East Side Marios. When we arrived, there was no one at the hostess counter. We stood waiting for 6 minutes as the hostess spoke with the manager in what appear d to be casual conversation. After we were finally acknowledged, we were told that it was impossible to seat us together. Odd given we were a relatively small group (8 people, two groups of four). Fine, no problem we can sit separate. 10-15 minutes we were told. This gave ample time to observe the operation. PILES of dirty cups littered the bar top. Three tables in the bar area were left as memorials to previous customers meals. 25 minutes later we were finally ushered to our tables. Not one customer had left in that time period. Not one glass, plate or bowl was removed. Not one table was wiped down. We were seated in the back of the restaurant. Table behind us appeared to be a collection point for dirty dishes from surrounding tables. As we had not seen a single customer depart, I am left to wonder how long they had sat there. Seating and booths appeared old and beat up. Perhaps highlighted by the dirty condition of the overall restaurant. As far as staff went our server was very polite and I don't want to throw her under the bus but the food was very low quality both in preparation and presentation. Before anyone jumps on me, I know. It's East Side Marios, what do I expect? I have eaten at East side a few times at different locations and the cooks usually take a little more pride in what they put out, even if it is in pre packaged portions from the supplier. My meal looked like an over heated microwave dinner. I got spicy sausage penne. Runny, watery, wilted peppers, and hardly any sausage. Colleague got chicken parm. Again looked liked it was thrown in a microwave except the chicken was burnt from the fryer. Still no one collected the dirty dishes nearby. I am not sure what was going on there with respect to management. There appeared to be four staff doing "hostess" bar duties (counting tables, grabbing drinks) three servers for approximately 25 people. No busboys, and a manager who looked around at the dirt and filth and did nothing. I worked in a pub during college and our manager would pick up the slack and direct staff in all situations to ensure as pleasant an environment as possible. Ultimately my opinion is that this falls on their shoulders. Would not recommend this location at all. If I could have done a review with 1/2 star or zero I would have. I could have eaten microwaved food in a dirty kitchen at my own house and saved myself 56 dollars. Two star rating was for the four star service from our server, offset by the 0 star rating for the rest of the staff.
• AC

  Anonymous Cupcakes

  3 days ago
  1.0
  Both me and my wife got shrimp Alfredo pasta. The pasta was not only essentially flavourless, the pasta sauce was literally so watery it flicked off of the pasta and everywhere like water colour paint. Shrimp was both somehow undercooked and simultaneously overcooked between both dishes. Ontop of that, we were made to pay for all of the food, despite the fact that it was so gross we did not eat it. Even worse, our waitress barely spoke to us not even twice, and we had to flag down an entirely different waitress to give us our drinks, which we didn’t even receive up until we got our food. Unacceptably slow service, poor quality food, generally all around bad experience. Incredibly disappointing considering we’ve been going to this location since 2020.
• SD

  Samantha Deutschlander

  4 days ago
  2.0
  First time I went was a couple weeks ago for a friends birthday. Our food took forever (1 + hr to get to us) our drinks were never refilled once. Once our food came out it was cold. Like ice cold. Decided to give them another chance. Ordered for picked up. I waited a full hour after my pick up time with a one year old in tow. Our food was ice cold when we drove 10 minutes home. Called in, manager gave us a $20 credit… kinda ok except it was a $45ish order. Fine. Ordered pick up again the next week to use my credit. Fine. Food was ready on time. Manager was great. Get home… the dessert that came with my husbands meal was not in the bag.. called them. They sent it by DoorDash and actually sent two more desserts. Anyways, I won’t be going back to that location specifically which sucks because I always celebrated my birthday as a kid there and have always preferred that location.
• LC

  Linzie Cave

  Nov 8, 2025
  1.0
  To quickly summarize: lost our reservation?? And horrible service from waitress Sarah and up front manager. I would give 0 stars if I could. Do not go here. This was the worst experience I’ve ever had in any restaurant. I will never come back again. I’ve come to this location twice and both times have had terrible service. This is not an East Side Mario’s problem because the one in Woodstock is great. This is a problem with this specific location. These servers and the up front manager need to fix their attitudes. To start, we were a group of 4 so we made a reservation for 6:15 and they somehow lost it?? They told us that we hadn’t made one so basically sucks to suck. So we spoke to the up front manager and she told us we’d get in asap. We waited 30 mins and watched 4 groups of 4 be seated, so we complained since it was a mistake on their end. Then we were finally seated next to the fridge (it was freezing), but without menus. We had to ask for them to be brought over and we had less than two minutes with them before the waitress came by and asked for our orders. We were rushed through our orders and then she finally brought the salads and they had no dressing on them. She was nowhere to be found so we had to ask the guys that prep the salads for a cup of dressing. The server (Sarah) was horrendous. She was “running the bar” but the servers were making their own drinks and she had 2 tables. She only went behind the bar to maybe(?) make her drinks and to chat. She kept disappearing and when she’d bring something we’d have two seconds to ask for anything else we needed. We had asked her for plates twice, extra napkins multiple times, a new bread board because we had to use it since we had no plates, bread and salads and she’d forget to bring them all. Some we eventually got after asking her multiple times (which she got annoyed at) but we never got the new bread board, the salads, or the napkins. I also ordered a second drink and she took my straw with it and never brought one back so I had to get up and ask a different waitress. My food finally came and it was not even warm so I had to send it back. The other dishes were lukewarm at best. She also took my fork with my food so I had to ask another person for one when my food finally came back. Everyone else at the table had finished eating and I was just starting. She was terrible the rest of the night and eventually we asked for the manager. The same up front manager came and she was not understanding whatsoever so we had to go to the other manager. He was great, but then had the same waitress bring us our bills. She had originally only brought out one bill and didn’t give us the option to split it so we had to ask and she got annoyed. She eventually came back after a long wait and threw them down on the table. She eventually got to the debit machine and threw it down on the table for each of us and threw the receipts down again with a slam. When she got to mine she had put in a total that was almost $40 over what my actual total was but she had slammed it down and ran back to the bar so I had to sit and wait for her to come back and fix it. When she did fix it she got super annoyed and left again. She did this for all four of our payments so what would’ve taken a minute turned into almost 10. Then she got to my mums and typed it in wrong twice and was basically yelling at her about it being right. She then got mad and crumpled it up and ran away. Then that same up front manager came back and told us to be more understanding because the waitress is the best they have, is pregnant and they were busy. That was incredibly unprofessional, but also not a valid excuse for terrible service. Also, I think it’s important to add that if this server is the best they have then how horrible are the other servers in this place? We had also come to this location in September and had a different waitress but she was also super rude and very slow (much like this one). At least the food was good that time though.
• BB

  Brooklyn

  Nov 8, 2025
  1.0
  We were told there was no reservation under my name after calling earlier and leaving my information and time. We spoke to the manager to see if we could fix it. Then we waited 30 minutes to be seated after asking the front of hose manager twice. We were finally sat beside the fridge door, no menus. We had to go to the front desk and ask for a menu/napkins/utensils Our waitress came and rushed through ordering which I don’t mind but we couldn’t even finish our sentences. All 4 salads came with close to no sauce, Couldn’t find the waitress anywhere so went up to salad bar to ask for cup of sauce. Asked for side plates because we got none, asked for more napkins and a new bread board since we had to use it for garbage disposal with no side plates. No Parmesan offered so we had to wait for her to come back around and then after asking she took a few minutes again *We were 1/3 small tables for her, she had a very small section* Had to call her back over when we needed salad and drink refills, even though she was standing at the bar maybe 10 feet from our table and could see. Soup didn’t come out with the salads or dinner. One of the plates came cold and we had to send it back. The lasagna on 1 plate was cold but chicken was warm. We still never got the salads or soup by the time we finished dinner. Asked for bread probably 3 times with none coming. She did not clear the table at any point, we are finished eating with all dishes from before and during dinner. We asked for the soup to go since it wasn’t brought, then we got the wrong soup brought to go. Had to get salads and bread to go because we never got them after asking multiple times. Asked for the manager and the same front of house GM that we dealt with for the reservation problem came over and offered 10% off which was laughable for us experiencing the worst service we’ve ever had. We went to find the other GM from the back of house and he was extremely nice. He gave us 50% off and free desserts to go. I’m shocked that the front of house is so much less customer friendly than the back. The front GM was barely trying to make it right and just wanted us out the door instead of listen to our feedback that we were nice about. Overall, waitress was very slow and caused terrible service, the front of house GM needs to work on how she treats customers but the back of house is great. The waitress finally came over with our 4 bills and was extremely rude when we were just trying to pay and get out. Not once did we get an apology from her, she was just sassy and childish. She tried to charge my sister $54 on a $16 bill, then got my mums total wrong twice as well. My mum finally got sassy back with her and then the waitress crumpled the receipts up and stormed off. The female manager (FOH) came over to take our final bill payment and was making excuses for the waitress, saying we need to be understanding because she’s “one of their best”, meanwhile they lost our reservation and treated us worse than we ever had been, and then had our waitress throwing a tantrum. I will never EVER come back or recommend this place to anyone.

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