Restaurant Review - Ciao Baby - Massapequa Park

Ratings listed from 1 (lowest - poor) to 10 (highest - excellent)

Food

The food was bad. We ordered the "family style" meal for 3 - Caprese, Sun Dried Tomatoes and Penne and Nonna's Old World Meat Platter.

The meat platter was awful. The meatball was an unspiced lump of hamburger meat and the rigatoni was very undercooked. Not Al Dente, just plain not cooked. You could probably chip a tooth on it. It amazed me because we waited 20 minutes between when we finished the Caprese to when it was served.

Caprese: The mozzarella was fine, but some of the tomatoes were still green.

Sun Dried Tomatoes and Penne: When the woman (not our server) or the guy that told us the specials dropped it off she said it was Penne ala vodka. We said that we ordered the Sun Dried Tomatoes and Penne and she stated "Oh, that's what this is." But there were no sun dried tomatoes in it.

	Atmosphere
OK, city like atmosphere, with a trendy bar area. The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived and about half full when we left but it was a little loud for so few people.

Service

Really remarkably bad! One guy took our drink order and then disappeared. Another guy (much later) told us the specials in way too much detail. Then, he didn't ask if we had questions or offer to get anything for us. Way too much talking and no listening. Then we never saw him again.

We had to flag down the drink order guy to get our son a drink, because he had failed to get it. When he delivered the drink we ordered at that point we had been there 20 minutes. I honestly don't know what their "plan" was for who was supposed to take the order, but come on!

Before our appetizer arrived, a woman comes out and nearly deposits two rice balls on our table and we have to tell her that we didn't order that. Our appetizer was finally delivered, but no attending to us or our drinks - just dump and run.

We waited 20 minutes after our appetizer before our food comes to the table. Confusion over what we ordered and what we got. See "FOOD" above. I love Italian food, but the meal was inedible. We ended up leaving it. We tried to talk to the manager about the whole experience, but he stated that we should have been told that the pasta was prepared Al Dente. I tried to explain the difference between Al Dente and uncooked. He said he could fix us something else and it would only take 5 minutes. We asked for the check.

	Value
If your meal is inedible, uncooked and not what you ordered, there is just no way to make it a good value. When it is overpriced as well, like this place, then you have the "perfect storm" of terrible value.

	Overall
I will never set foot in that place again. Turned a pleasant evening out into a stressful, "I can't believe this $#%&!!!" night!" I don't normally write reviews, I have no friends or family that work for a competitor. But when I get treated that poorly I just can't bite my tongue. STAY AWAY! I wish someone had warned me before I went there.

Would you return?