it is so hard for me to figure out the right grade to give the east side mario's in camrose because to be honest it has been my favorite restraunt for a few years now and my heart aches to give it 5 star rating. Unfortunately my last experience with the place was so bad that i am unsure if i will ever go back again or not.
one of the real joys of east side is they sell unlimited soup, salad and bread for a very decent price. this is probably the key to what makes the chain so popular. my wife and i would pay more for the offering if mario's felt they needed to charge more to be profitable.
the bread is great bread... the italian wedding soup is good enough to create cravings for it... and the salad is a decent salad that is always fresh and edible.
the service is normally quite good too... ive eaten at this location and others in the company at least 50 times and have very good experiences with the service at least 90% of the time.
my last experience though was a complete disaster. my wife goes for the all you can eat salad. i like pizza. so my pizza came and it was below normal standards for marios. they normally make great pizza, so even a substandard one is still pretty tasty. i was ok with my side of the meal.
my wife tried to get a second bowl of soup and was told that she could only have one bowl. we asked if the all you can eat option was discontinue and our server told us yes it was.
we felt the price was outrageous for a single bowl of soup and finished our meal very unhappy since we had lost a great treasure to us. i was confused so when i waited to pay my bill i grabbed a menu. on the menu it said that the all you can eat option was still applicable.
i asked the girl about it that i was paying.. she got agitated immediately and called over the manager. i explained to the manager we had been refused all you can eat. he didnt seem to apologize, but asked instead if we wanted another bowl of soup now? unfortunately by this time my wife had become very upset and insisted on leaving. the manager didnt try to offer us a coupon... or an apology... or say that he would talk to the waitress to correct her on her screw up. i got no sense at all from him that he felt he owed us anything at all.
now this is my wife and my favorite chain. weve eaten at the edmonton and red deer locations often. used the chain anytime weve taken out the kids for family get togethers. taken my parents here. taken other friends here. we've eaten here at least every month once since it opened. im a very fat guy and easy to identify. i tip around 10-20% regular.we arent loud when we eat.
im the type of customer a restruant should kill to get... and usually mario's seemed to appreciate my business over the years. one time they served us cold fries and immediately replaced them when we mentioned it. they apologized to us when they took their wonderful garlic mashed potatoe offering off the menu and said it was just a company decesion. they almost always offer to grate fresh parmesian cheese onto my pizzas and i just love that.
the price is always very fair imo and for my wife and i, the cost never goes over 30 dollars for a dinner even with my tips.
so i am sad i can only give the place 2 stars, but i can not for the life of me understand why they gave us such a crappy experience last time. i have to wonder if it was personal somehow? maybe because i am fat? I don't know but they screwed up the signature offering right to our faces then 2 of them had a chance to apologize for it and neither did. In a way, I wish I had compained alot louder at the time and gotten a reason for this screw up. Instead, I get to come here and share it with all of you because it just wasn't right at all. I hope if anyone from Mario's sees this, they will understand this was unacceptable behavior and they lost a customer they used to make alot of profit off of.
it's too late to get my business back {at least until i forget about this experince anyhow} but maybe you can learn from my anger here and not pull crap like this on anyone else. I see that your location in edmonton south commons has closed and reopened as someone else. I dont know why that is? Food and price are always good IMO, but service has definitely dropped in quality over the past few years from 10 star when i fell in love with the chain.. to 7-8 star most of the time in recent years... and finally to a NEGATIVE this last experience I shared here today.
i wont go 1 or 0 stars for this review cause i have too many good memories for that, but you took one of your most loyal customers and made me grade you 2 out of 5 stars today because your service angered me that much last time out and i think you should have a chance to know about it so you can fix it better then you did when i complained in person read more