UPDATE ON 05/14/2025: THE HOUSTON HEALTH DEPARTMENT CONDUCTED AN INVESTIGATION, AND THE FINDINGS ARE NOW ATTACHED AS WELL!
On Sunday, May 11, 2025, our family of 14 adults & 6 underage kids went to eat at FIORI Restaurant for my mother's birthday. Since then, 11 of us (6 adults & 5 kids; youngest being 1 year old) now have food poisoning symptoms (projectile vomiting, chills, muscle pain, fever, & diarrhea). Some started noticing symptoms immediately, and some developed overnight between Sunday and Monday. We tried contacting the restaurant immediately (Sunday night), but the owner, Chef Alessio Vitale, refused to speak to us; their "excuse" was that he had already left the restaurant. It wasn't until Monday, May 12th at 2:28 PM that we finally received a generic reply from him, taking NO responsibility whatsoever. Our bill totaled a ridiculous almost $1,800, and we are now left dealing with food poisoning, some of us still can't return to work or school, and some now have medical bills from visiting the doctors, which was confirmed as food poisoning by several doctors.
Aside from the above, I want to also emphasize how horribly we were treated during our reservation. We made this reservation on April 24, 2025, with ample time for the restaurant to be prepared for our large party. I made this reservation DIRECTLY with the owner to ensure my mother's birthday goes perfectly. Our reservation was set at 3:00 PM, but upon arriving, we had to wait an additional 20 minutes for our table to be set as it was not ready. When we arrived, it was drizzling rain outside, and they proceeded to put our whole family in their upstairs outdoor patio despite the owner assuring me weeks prior that if there was bad weather, they would make sure we would get an inside table. After expressing our concern about being in the drizzling rain with small children and elders, they wanted to place us inside but split our group into different parts of the restaurant. After being out in the rain for about 30 minutes, the weather cleared up and we decided just to keep the table. Our server took about 45 minutes to take our drink orders, yes, our drinks; we received our entree meals 2 hours later. But they did not provide us with silverware or napkins until we requested them repeatedly. We were VERY understanding given the fact that it was Mother's Day but overall, it seemed like they left us outside on purpose with no intention even to bother checking in on us. Our waiter was completely RUDE; We found ourselves asking for the same things repeatedly and at one point she just stopped showing up to our table until we demanded the check. Due to them messing up our orders MULTIPLE times and missing several items they offered us a sorry 10% discount but that obviously just proved that they were neglecting our table, and they were aware of doing it. The 10% discount does NOT justify our food being uncooked, cold and clearly unsafe to eat. Now, two days later, we are dealing with much greater issues with food poisoning in our family. We hope that everyone takes this review seriously, as we don't want anyone else to fall victim to this restaurant's negligence in keeping a safe kitchen & serving completely unsafe food.
I have attached SOME of the many evidence we have, as well as a copy of the receipt for proof of our visit. Everything is time-stamped as proof for everyone. As mentioned, our reservation was at 3:00 PM. You can see from the receipt that our order wasn't placed until 4:08 PM, and we did not get the check until 6:26 PM. We were there for a total of almost 4 hours due to poor and slow service...ridiculous!
A message to Chef Alessio Vitale; you can try to justify my review just like you try and justify other bad but HONEST reviews but please be reminded that this is a very serious matter that is now being investigated by multiple outlets and we have plenty of evidence proving all of the above. People's health is no joke, especially when it involves small children. Thank you for ruining my very first Mother's Day and my mother's birthday!
To Frain Gutierrez, the Valet, thank you for being the ONLY helpful person at this restaurant. Thank you for assisting my 87-year-old grandma up the steps, as no other staff from the restaurant offered to help and thank you for helping me unload our stuff from our car as you saw us struggling with a small child.
Overall, we wish this establishment the very best for what's to come for their business after our traumatizing experience. read more