Il Localino - Inman Park

I recently celebrated my birthday with some friends by dining at Il Localina. It was my second visit to this restaurant and very likely my last. We had a party of nine on a Thursday night and I think it is important to point out that for the entire time that we dined, there were only four other diners in the restaurant. We ordered apps, cocktails, bottles of wine...then it was time to order entrees.

My dear friend Olga loves shellfish and wanted to order the mussels. It was only offered as an appetizer, not an entree. Well, Il Localina has a special stipulation printed on the bottom of their menu (which one would never notice without it being pointed out) that states each diner must order an entree. After some discussion Olga finally was able to persuade the server to allow her to have the mussels as her entree but the server was clearly not happy about it.

We went on to have our entrees served. I actually was quite pleased with mine however another friend ordered the chicken piccata without as much luck. What was brought to him was three of the tiniest chicken tenders that I have ever seen served in a restaurant. It was actually such a minuscule dish that I have gave him half of my dish.

In the meantime my 19 year-old daughter was sat next to me and had requested a refill to her Sprite three separate times to two different servers. On the third request the server informed us that they are charging us for each refill. Oddly, my friend Bob had several Diet Coke refills with no such disclosure.

So here is my point. Although most of us enjoyed our dinner, there were problems with food, service, and pricing. I would not say it was an over-all bad experience but...when you only have four diners in your restaurant in a two-hour period and I bring in nine people that collectively spent over $50 each I think it is in fairly bad form to charge per fountain soda and insist on each person ordering an entree. I really didn't feel treated very well on what was a very special day.