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East Side Mario's
Category: Restaurants Italian Italian [Edit]
615 Street Albert RoadSt Albert, AB T8N 3L3
(780) 470-5880
3 reviews for East Side Mario's
3 reviews in English
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Review from Myles C.
Edmonton, AB
6/27/2010 1 photo
It was delicious and not hard on the wallet. I had the lasagna and the woman had the cheese cattilelinni. Pardon my spelling
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Review from Jeff G.
5/4/2012 1 Check-in Here
If East Side Mario's put as much attention to detail into their food and service as they do the decor and overall vibe of the place, they would be onto something. It didn't look promising when we walked in. It was pretty busy inside. There were already two families standing inside the entrance waiting for somebody to acknowledge their existence and possibly show them to a table. Several staff members walked by us, around us, and through us without so much as a "hello." They never said that somebody would be by to seat us either. Always a good move to make your customers feel invisible.
When we were finally seated, I ordered the Mario's Chicken Parmigiana. That was my first disappointment. It tasted like a Weight Watchers frozen dinner. The chicken was dry and scaly. It was like sandpaper. As some of you may know, I am a milkshake enthusiast so I ordered the Oreo Cookie shake. It was completely tasteless and bland. It was more like a Tim Horton's Ice Cap. Or more accurately it was like the sludge that you scrape off your ice tray when you're defrosting your freezer. It's not even worthy of being called a milkshake. It was five bucks, just like John Travolta and Uma Thurman's shake on "Pulp Fiction." But unlike John and Uma's this one wasn't worth 'five dollahs." Avoid this one.
Our waitress made a really good first impression. She was enthusiastic, talkative, and psychotically friendly. It's too bad about her short-term memory loss though. Poor kid. We had soup and bread brought to us for appetizers before the sandpaper and freezer sludge were served. We finished the bread and then asked for some more. No problem, she says. About 10 or 15 minutes later she came to the table and said that the bread was still in the oven. Eventually our main courses were served and consumed. The bread was never mentioned again, it went the way of Marty McFly's older brother on the photograph. I guess the waitress forgot all about it. Just like I'm going to forget all about this East Side Mario's.
I'm glad that we had a gift card. -
Review from Kevin M.
10/1/2011 1 Check-in Here
I used to play baseball when I was younger and much more fit. I am now a foodie and my belly definitely shows it.
In baseball, 4 balls gets you on base and unfortunately 3 strikes and you are out! Well, what does this have to do with East Side Mario's? Just sit right back and you will hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip...
It is Mom's 77th birthday and guess what she has a coupon $10 off at East Side Mario's. So to make Mom happy we make a reservation for 7 people at East Side Mario's in St. Albert. We are advised on making the reservation that "all reservations will have a 15% gratuity automatically added". I immediately think this is great as I usually tip 20% and round up, but if they are going to force me to an amount, the server doesn't get a penny more. (ok so I am already a bit ticked off)
We arrived for our 5:30 pm reservation and the table was ready and we were seated right away (looks like it is going to be a good night). As I sit down, I touch the chair next to the one I chose and I thought it was going to fall over (one leg was about an inch shorter than the others), the wobble that was there has to have been noticed by someone (the downhill slide begins). Our server gets the chair replaced but not before finding three more with just as bad of a wobble and of course just leaves them for some other unsuspecting customer.
Our food order is taken in a respectable amount of time, Mom orders a shrimp and pasta dinner (a good choice for a 77 year old) and a stuffed mushroom appetizer. My niece just orders soup for her entrée and her Dad orders the linguini carbonara (it comes with three skewers of bacon wrapped scallops) with a soup appetizer. There is lots of conversation going on an none of us really knows what the other has ordered.
One of the other servers shortly brings the stuffed mushroom caps and a bowl of soup to the table asking who ordered the soup and my niece puts up her hand and the soup is in front of her and mushroom caps in front of the birthday girl and he is gone. It takes Katie about 20 minutes to work her way through the bowl of soup when our server finally comes to the table and asks why Katie as her soup already (noticing the Brian did not have his). She immediately makes an excuse saying I told him to give the soup to the guy. She asks Brian if he still wants his soup, which he says yes and asks Katie if she wants another as her appy so she doesn't have to sit with nothing while we eat. Katie says no thank you.
Within seconds of her leaving the table our entrées are being brought to the table. Brian has a nice order of linguini carbonara with three skewers of bacon wrapped scallops, three skewers with one tiny scallop on each one, the three could have fit on half of one skewer. He starts eating his linguini and is about half way through and his soup now arrives at the table. Now, my parents are with me so I am bitting my tongue and not making a scene for Mom's birthday.
The rest of the meal is fairly uneventful, other than when I asked for fresh ground pepper on my steak I got to enjoy her elbow in my face as the pepper was ground.
We asked for our bill, as she brought it to us she cheerily said "just in case you didn't know, 15% was automatically added because of the reservation but you can give me more". She was handed a credit card and the ten dollar coupon to go process the bill. The credit card receipt came back, it was signed and we got up to leave. As we were walking out we noticed that the ten dollar discount wasn't applied (but that automatic %15 tip sure was... go figure). I stopped at the door and asked for the manager.
The manager came over and I told her about the 10 dollar coupon error and started describing some of the other problems of the night. She snapped at me to just wait, she walked away about two minutes later she came back and demanded the credit card so she could cancel the whole original bill and redo it with the 10 dollar discount. She came back with the adjust bill and snootily said "the server says you never gave her a coupon but I took it off anyway", I replied "well you better check the floor because it was handed to her with the credit card". The credit card receipt was signed and out the door we went.
On the way out we noticed that they forgot to re-apply the automatic 15% gratuity. I might have given a 5% tip, but now the server had nothing. Somehow I don't feel bad, and as this was now the third time in four visits the I have had problems at this location. 1 ball 3 strikes YOUR OUT!
Their only saving grace was the Funnel Cake I had for dessert. YUMMY! This got them an extra star (2 instead of 1).
