Giostra Restaurant in South Barrington: Opening Night Disaster

Well paging through my Instagram I noticed a page pop-up for a brand new Italian restaurant opening up in the South Barrington area. The owner of the restaurant is a very popular restaurateur Fabio Viviani with over 50 restaurants under his belt, some being the famous Bar Sienna. That takes me to my next location that I will review.

Giosta in South Barrington.

The restaurant had a grand opening this past Monday October 14th. The reservation system was acting all messed up and no one would answer the phones at the restaurant. I was going with my family a party of six and it was near impossible to try and secure a reservation.

I tried one last time with their online reservation system and was able to snag a reservation for 515. We raced over to the restaurant trying to make it on time. We also did not know what the atmosphere or dress code was going to be like so we dressed somewhat casual.

They had complementary valet in front of the restaurant. We walked in and it was much smaller than the Instagram videos made it look. They only had one table they could accommodate a six person. it was an awkward large roundtable near the bar area. It was half booth that was lifted about 3 to 4 feet off the ground and the other chairs were high top bar chairs. They were not comfortable by any means. They had no area to put your feet in front of you so you constantly felt like you were tipping forward, but there was nowhere else to sit and of course this being Chicago weather it was absolutely freezing one of the coldest days so far in the last couple of months so we cannot sit outside Though it looked like they had a pretty nice patio for nicer days.

A manager stopped by and greeted us and told us if there’s anything we need please let him know. I thought that that was a nice touch we were greeted by our server. I do not know if this was her first time ever serving, but she did not seem like she knew exactly what to do in regards to taking orders or properly, asking us what we needed.

I understand that this was the grand opening first day of the restaurant, but they were missing some major items that every restaurant should have. Such as iced. Major liqueurs such as Kahlúa they did not have a very large selection of soft drinks. I suck with water and luckily they had a Diet Coke.

The waitress asked if we wanted still or sparkling water we went with still… there was no option to get free water so I do not know if they offered it or not, but our server definitely did not offer to us. She started to pour water on the table and gave us maybe two small gaps of water per glass. I asked her why is she not filling up our water? She explained that the water would run out of the bottle. I told her that we order another bottle water what is the point of having maybe one of water per glass I do not think the server ever served before.

We started to put our order in for appetizers. We ordered them on the menu. We tried there calamari and shrimp appetizer. We also tried the carpaccio another sliced pork dish, and their Aranchini.

The portions were extremely small. I understand we were six people, but I think I literally had half a bite of each appetizer. None of the appetizers were really memorable or that good.

My wife got her signature Caesar salad that she gets it every restaurant. The Caesar salad again was good, but nothing remarkable or memorable.

My sister tried a couple of their signature cocktails they all did not taste good.

We put on our order for our main dishes. Everything on the menu sounded so absolutely fantastic. I ordered the vodka sauce fuccelli. my wife ordered the chicken Parmesan. My other guest ordered the a brace pork shoulder with saffron rice. We also ordered a chicken Milanese dish and lastly linguine clam sauce. we also ordered for the table a bread that consisted of truffle cream, prosciutto, and Stracietella.

It took some time for dishes to come out. The restaurant was starting to get somewhat busy still not as busy as I thought it would be an opening night.

When our entees came to the table all of the pasta was hard. It was undercooked my vodka sauce with some of the worst vodka sauce I’ve ever had in my entire life. They added way too much tomato to the sauce, and not enough cream or vodka. My pasta was clump together all of my pastas were the same dishes were very salty. We also ordered a couple other sides such as broccolini, which was a salt lick. For the owner to own over 50 restaurants I don’t know how he allowed this to leave the kitchen.

We asked for the general manager to come by. He came to the table and told us he was sorry and we told him we’re not asking for free food. We just wanna let him know that the food is awful to save him any aggravation with future guests and walked away.

I did not eat any of my dish. It was awful. The pork shoulder was the only thing that one of my guests thoroughly enjoyed.

I don’t know why we did this but my guess also wanted to order dessert. I did not want to give this place anymore money because everything was just that bad but we ordered desserts with cannoli. We also ordered a sticky toffee cake tiramisu chocolate gelato. Everything was not good except for the toffee cake. I don’t know how it’s possible, but the inside of my cannoli filling was warm, the cannoli was obviously in a bag was just sitting out not being chilled.

At this point, I was ready to get out of here. I was lucky that I was not paying for this. My nephew told us that he got the bill. The bill came the $525 after they took off the desserts.

I do not know if I will ever come back to this location to try them again they’re extremely pricey. The portions are small and they’re so far off the mark with in regards to taste. I understand that this was their first night and will give them some slack for that, but the staff seems like they don’t know what to do they look lost. They also need to seriously train the kitchen staff and also stock at the bar with more items than what they offer.

I give a rating of 4.5 out of 10 to Giostra in South Barrington.

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