Pompilios

Reviews 4

A

A Private User

Well, the good news is you can get seated at Pompilios on a Friday night with no wait. Why? Because this place is horrible. From start to finish, it is tremendously awful. Lets start with the bread. Its Wonder Bread. Seriously. It has curvier edges, but its definitely Wonder Bread. And even though my boyfriend gave me "a look" when I lordered a glass of Sangiovese, I went through with it. Big mistake. I am still regretting it now, as I lay on the couch recovering. Laboring through the writing of this review in an heroic act of self-sacrifice, that I may save someone else from sharing my fate. But I digress. There is more to discuss. Take the salad. I expected limp and lifeless lettuce, sure. I wasnt surprised by the single token grape tomato and cucumber slice. The kicker was the tiny plastic cup of Italian dressing. When I sniffed it, I smelled sugar. But there was nothing for it -- if the salad was to be eaten at all, it needed dressing. After swallowing our first bites, we could only describe the taste of the dressing as sugar water with a bit of vinegar. Truly horrifying. I dont even know how that clear liquid could qualify as salad dressing. And then our main course arrived. By the time the salads came, I knew I had made a poor choice of entrees, so I awaited my plate of pasta with trepidation. My rigatoni a la teresa was described in the menu as rigatoni pasta topped with mozzarella, sausage, eggs and marinara sauce. "How are the eggs, do you think? Fried? Or mixed into the sauce?" I asked my boyfriend. "Like mixed in," he said. "Like spaghetti carbonara?" He nodded. Boy, were we wrong. My dish had slices of hard boiled egg in it. Let me repeat. Hard boiled egg. Actually, it wasnt all that bad. But a few bites into it, I started to feel nauseous. Now, I cant say if it was the bad wine or the pasta dish, but my stomach was definitely feeling queasy. Im still queasy. The only saving grace of the meal was my boyfriends manicotti. There was nothing particularly original or singularly tasty about it, but it was pretty good. And for all of you who are over the moon for the ambience, I just have one question. Really? Granted, the small tiled bar area is quite quaint and pretty. I was charmed by it when we walked in. And sure, its cool that they filmed that one scene of Rain Man there. I guess I can see how you might be blinded by nostalgia if youve lived here all your life and grew up eating at Pompilios with your family. And if youve never had real Italian food anywhere else -- even the Maggianos chain, as my boyfriend pointed out. As a rule, Im a staunch champion of the local independent eatery. But if you want Italian and its between Pompilios and a chain, pick the chain. I beg of you.

DA

Dayahn Thomas

This was by far the worst experience Ive had at a restaurant! Our reservation was at 7:30. When we arrived we were informed it would be a little after our time that we will be seated. A little over was a major exaggeration! We didnt get seated until 8. Even with that, my party was still in good spirits. We quickly ordered our food because we had to be somewhere by 930, but unfortunately at 9:20 we still hadnt received our food. At this point we are concerned we wouldnt get to eat, so we inquire how much longer it would be before we get our food. The manager came over and another guest in my party told her that we were upset because our reservation was 2 hours ago and we still havent ate yet. The manager, who I might add had the professionalism of a rude teenager, responded to her by saying, " let me check to see if thats how long youve actually been waiting." No apology at all but challenging her on if we had actually been waiting two hours was rude. At this point we asks for our checks and our food in to go boxes. About 10 minutes later our checks and our food come out. Im glad I checked mine before I paid because I am a vegetarian and my eggplant parmigiana had sausage in it. I expressed this to the server who brought us our food who responded to me that eggplant parmigiana doesnt have meat in it and walked away. At this point I was upset. I waited over 2 hours to have a sit down meal that turned into a to go order and the cooks were so careless that obviously they were cross contaminating the food. The manager never offered us compensation, the owner never came to talk to us after we repeatedly ask for him and we were extremely offended by staff. I ended up leaving my meaty vegetarian meal there along with my bill. I told the manager it was wrong and she did apologize this time but I still had to leave the restaurant hungry and food less. I as well as the 14 other people in my party plan to never go back there and I will post this on every review site I can. If you decide to try it, I hope your experience will be different

DE

DeJay Herrmann

This has been my 2nd experience to Pompilios and Im pretty sure my last. The first time I thought might of just been an off day, wasnt impressed by the store bought sliced cold bread, nor the cold butter packets they give you that only destroy the bread when you try to spread it. The salad is clearly store bought regular bagged salad. Like Dole... and each time that Ive been to Pompilios the salad has looked to be a day or 2 old. I believe the dressing is store bought as well. The fact that they dont have free refills???? That is just plain stupid. Moving forward we ordered the calamari for an appetizer... What a mistake. We usually love calamari but this was TERRIBLE! They only gave you about 6 - 7 pieces of actual calamari, and it was soft, and under cooked. Not crispy what so ever and it was on a plate full of pasta sauce and a big piece of leaf lettuces??? Speaking of their pasta sauce, its more like tomato paste with big pieces of canned tomatos in it. We had our server get the manager and told them what a disappointment our experience was at this point with the crappy bread, 1 or 2 day old salad and the horrible appetizer. The manager did say he was going to take the appetizer off our bill. Then our main courses came. Ugggggh... yet again a disappointment. The pasta was something that tasted like store bought that you just heat up in some hot water, Ive already told ya about the pasta sauce, chicken was good but what fried chicken isnt? Meatballs were nothing to rave about. 1 out of 10 Id give this place about a 2 for food. I would of much rather of gone to Olive Garden... Karlos Bistro,.... or McDonalds. Just like everyone else we were sucked in by the fact this place has been open since the 30s and that a part of a famous movie was filmed there. Other than that save your money and go get dinner worth enjoying.

A

A Private User

Locals will say good things about Pompilios without having much knowledge as to what to expect out of Italian food. This IS NOT the kind of place to take a date for good Italian. They served cold, crappy bread in a basket. This was the most flavorless generic white bread you could find at any supermarket, it had little butter packets thrown in. For an appetizer I ordered the Grilled Veggie Combo, some of the veggies came fried! What about "grilled" implies "breaded and fried"??? Also ordered a Caesar Salad... the salad was a bunch of iceberg lettuce, these annoying croutons, and vinaigrette dressing. I saw no parmesan cheese or caesar dressing! For a main course I had the Veal Parmigiana. There were to of us wanting to split it and we told the waitress this in advance. So, she brings us two plates and the meal on a platter. We had to divide this on two plates which was very messy and awkward with our cheap silverware. When we finally ate it, we decided we had each had better food out of a Lean Cuisine entree. This was my first dining experience at this establishment and my last.