Mezza Luna – beware: dead fly on food and bad service
I’ll start by saying 2 things: a) rude waitress and did not want to repeat the special of the day while being inconsiderate to my baby and b) found a half dead fly in...the pasta dish.
I used to love this place and celebrated bdays twice but after the bad treatment and fly on our food this past Saturday I will not ever go back. IF you want to read the whole story see below.
On this past Saturday July 31st we went to Mezza Luna to celebrate my parents 56th anniversary and brought our 16 month old baby with us. The night started ok when they were accommodating about joining 2 tables for us but it got bad when the waitress told me she was not going to repeat the specials as I was attending my baby that was sitting on the stroller and wanted more bread. I will mention that when we sat down first she rushed into stating the and got annoyed when she started to describe the 2nd dish and I had asked her to slow down so I could translate into Spanish to my parents but then she said she could do it in Spanish, so when we switched back to English for my husband and I to listen to her, that’s when she became rude and said she will not repeat it again. I thought that was very rude and lack of consideration for someone that is dealing with a baby. She did not even say are u ready to listen to the specials and was not patient at all, she seemed to be in a rush the whole night and there was no reason for that since the restaurant was more than ½ empty.
When I went to the bar area to talk to ask for a manager I was told by a heavy size and tall man that he was the owner and that waitress was the co-owner and the waitress/co-owner said that she had already told me the menu twice and was getting our bread and that if we wanted to leave to go ahead and leave, not any apologies. I said we will not leave and to just forget it and deal with it, although I wish I had but did not want to look for another place to eat at 9PM with a baby at that time.
After we resettled in our table, I asked her for more bread for us since my baby loved the bread and she said that no, that our food was already on the way and that they will charge us additional since she had already brought 2 baskets of bread. I was shocked about that when the baskets of bread were very small and my baby already had finished ½ of it on her own. These was also not th bread that they used to put in the table some time back, it was a much smaller portion.
Then the worst part of the night came, when my mom was eating her pasta with funghi sauce and sees a bug in the food. It was a fly that was moving up and down the plate very slowly and we just covered it with a napkin and asked the waitress to come and see it. Her respond was I am sorry there are flies that come and I do not have control of that. While there was a fly surrounding our table I told her this is not a fly that just landed on our food, my mom got is from underneath the food and you can see it was almost dead and we covered it with a napkin and I had shown that to the waiter that came to pick it up. I was so shocked about this co-owner/waitress lack of accountability and response to the fly incident, it was to her like no bi deal and she offered to exchange it but at that point we did not want a new dish anymore and were grossed out and concerned about the sanitation in the kitchen and if she would just transfer the food with fly to a new plate and pretend it was new. I was unable to eat my food neither because I got so grossed out and she only offer to take off the food with the fly from the bill.
A very dissappointing experience at Mezza Luna, which now I call Mosca Luna (mosca = fly in spanish). Will never go back. Sharing this experience so you are aware of this and make your own judgement if you decide to go there. I will be calling the Health Department to report this incident.
I also noted a very low turnout on Saturday. While we are still living in Covid times, the low turnout surprised me. Other places we tried in the area were fully booked, and I wonder if others have been having bad experiences at Mezza Luna lately as I had it this past Saturday. As mentioned, used to love it but no more. Did the owners change? What happened: did service and cleaning went down the drain?More