Gianni's Cafe
18 W Station St, Palatine
(847) 991-1416
Recent Reviews
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It's always delicious here we love it. The food is enough to share and the service is always good.
Local and frequent diners of Gianni's. Usually it's pretty good and we look forward to our dinner there! Have taken groups of 10+ to just us 4. Friday night was a little off. The minestrone soup which we've had numerous times, tasted sweet and no pasta and very little veggies. It's our go to however they were nice to switch it out for house salads. Of course eyes rolled by our waitress when we told her... We tried their weekly special gnocchi a la primavera. Eh it's a sweet dry dish in brown butter (ghee tasting). I took it home to fix which tasted so much better then! Our other go to is eggplant involtini which was on par as usual! Our next go to is chicken vesuvio. Times are hard and portions of chicken are smaller now. Used to be a good sized dish with enough gravy but was drier than usual. I didn't want eyes rolled again... so we kept quiet, packed it up and fixed the dishes at home for next days lunch! Not sure if I'm going again this year... they didn't impress me much as they usually do.
Everything here tonight was perfect. The service, food, drinks ambience couldn't be better. You won't be disappointed for sure. Great dinner!
First time trying the brunch. Everything was delicious! Service was impeccable and every employee went out of their way to be friendly and accommodating!
The restaurant is lovely. It's been here for years. We had amazing service! But the food was mediocre at best. I had chicken vesuvio.... It lacked flavor and the potatoes were either not cooked or just mush. My husband had a dish with salmon and pasta. It was all covered in the red sauce. He dug into it only to discover the salmon had the skin on .... Just didn't seem appropriate for the dish. The salads were good .... But overall it was a disappointment.
Great neighborhood restaurant. Been coming here for years. Wait staff is outstanding. A little expensive for Italian food, but worth it.
We’ve been wanting to try Giannis for a while but never got there. Waiting was a mistake! Everything was great about the dining experience: service, wine menu, and of course the food. The marinara was the freshest I’ve ever eaten and the pasta was tasty. We got the carrot cake for a dessert and had a bit that night and it was dessert for the next two meals! Amazing and huge! It was a but pricey ($110 for dinner with one glass of wine for both of us) but it was a fantastic meal for a special occasion or just a nice night out. Fantastic!
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 5
Service: 5
The Sunday brunch buffet for $25 with bottomless mimosas/bloodies for $10 is a great deal. There's a decent spread. The food is good. The broccoli pieces are hilariously large.
Unfortunately nobody explained any of this to us. We were sat and then nobody told us about the buffet or brought us waters for at least 25 minutes. We managed to flag down a server and got waters, but never got checked on again. So we never even had an opportunity to order drinks.
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 4
Service: 1
Recommended dishes: Brunch
Very Good Restaurant. I will come back.
Gianni's is a solid 5-star restaurant for an unbelievable Italian dinner experience. The menu, service, and food are all amazing.
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 5
Service: 5
Restaurantji Recommends
Came by for dinner on Friday 9/13/24 around 6:30, party of 2. We were promptly greeted & seated by the host. Our drink orders were taken and promptly received, but my boyfriend and I sat around for about 15 minutes before even meeting our server. Oil & Cheese was served but it took a bit before our bread came out… We ordered an app to start (the Eggplant Involtini, it was tasty. Cooked nicely, I personally enjoyed the “dry” ricotta that was used versus the real wet, soupy kind, and the sauce was fresh and vibrant tasting.) this took about 10-15 minutes before it came out before placing our order for our entrees. I got the Chicken Giardiniera, he got a BYO Pasta comprised of cavatelli carbonara add peas, add garlic. Entrees took about 45 minutes to come out, and in this time we didn’t see our server until we were about halfway through our meal and frankly were finished at that point. The portions were quite large in my opinion but the quality didn’t seem to justify the cost. There was SO much butter. Sooooooo. Much. Butter. in both of our dishes to the point that it was separating out and pooling on top of the dishes. Very heavy and salty. The carbonara seemed more akin to an Alfredo sauce. We didn’t see our server again until she dropped our check. Maybe she was weeded out (it seemed busy), or maybe it was in avoidance due to an error with our order, but it was hard to flag her down at times. She was very sweet and apologetic for the wait, but a little more attentiveness would have been appreciated. We’re generally patient guys, but we were closing in on nearly an hour and a half before food arrived and it was upsetting, with little communication taboot. To me it wasn’t awful but certainly could’ve been better for the $91 pre-tip price tag.
Atmosphere: 5
Food: 3
Service: 2
Server kinda forgot about us.
It got very loud.
Atmosphere: 4
Food: 5
Service: 3
We've visited Gianni's MANY times over the years, always having a wonderful experience. Tonight was a rare “off night.” Delays with drinks from the bar are somewhat expected on a Friday night. There was a very long wait for food from the kitchen. One of our meals was a kids Mac & Cheese. I felt bad for our server who had no answers. The food was excellent as always when it did arrive. Just an “off night”
We came in on Saturday at 6:00 pm, within 5 minutes got to our table, it took about 15 min for the waitress to come over and take our drink order. We ordered an appetiser which came within 10 min, so far so good. Then we placed our order and the waiting game began. To make the long story short, after 40 min we asked for our bill because we were tired of waiting. Waitress apologised and brought our bill. At the same time our main course came out and it was comped but we didn't want to eat anymore, it was 7:45. That's why the overall experience was ruined for us
Gianni's is always fantastic! The cocktails were awesome, they have the best old fashioned around. All the food was spectacular, and always ask for the fried calamari Sicilian Style. Some other best dishes are the chicken giardiniera, the stuffed peppers, veal parmesan, and the many nightly specials they have are always spectacular. Our server on this particular occasion was absolutely outstanding and extremely helpful and informative. Gianni is a simply the best Italian restaurant in the area and is well worth the trip every single time.
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