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Review content:
I decided to celebrate my wife's 50th birthday at Mambo Italiano, with my daughter and her boyfriend. As we waited to be seated, we noticed the Latin music and wondered if we were at the wrong place. After all, we wanted Italian food. I guess that's why they call it ""Mambo"" Italiano. Anyway, for starters, the server was very pushy, and curt. In fact, usually it is me to complain about service, but this time it was all three of my family members who were complaining. In fact, my 24 year old daughter wanted to speak to the manager, which I've never seem her do. The 1/2 carafe of house red wine was worse than box wine. It was so bad that I couldn't even drink it and had to send it back. IT WAS TERRIBLE! The server seemed annoyed by the fact that we wanted to know a few descriptions of the ""Mambo"" dishes and said there are no substitutions on weekend nights. Anyway, the food arrived and it was fair, at best. I ordered the Lasagna which was bland. The meat sauce tasted like generic Ragu with hamburger...NO FLAVOR! When I asked for fresh grated parmesan, I was given a pizza shaker with regular run of the mill, Kraft style parmesan. Also, they went way overboard with the ricotta cheese, that I wound up scooping it out in order to eat the noodles and meat sauce. My daughter's side of steamed veggies contained a mystery veggie. No one could figure out what it was! Beyond that, it was about 60% cauliflower. Get this; they make absolutely NO accommodations for birthdays. In fact, I'm sure the server could tell we were disappointed, so she actually suggested that we try the yogurt place next door! The night really wound up a disaster when I forgot to redeem my $25 gift certificate. We had just gotten to the end of the parking lot when my wife mentioned it. I rushed back to get the bill corrected (within 5 min of leaving), and the owner Ron said ""I'm not going to do it"". I was shocked! We just dropped $130 for poor service and bland Italian food, and he wouldn't accept the very thing that enticed me to go there. What a disappointment! I too am a transplant from NY/NJ area. I have run a number of successful restaurants in NYC, too. You can get away with that kind of crap in the city, but you won't last too long pissing off people down here in the South. We want good honest service, and good food. Period. Ronnie Mancuso, do yourself a favor and go back up north IF you intend to keep running your restaurant like this.
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