Ribs and Bones

This duo is great to listen to with 3 hours of top music.

Nice Presentation, but lack substance

I have have been there twice. Once on an anniversary dinner in the fall and once in the summer for my mothers birthday.

Both times I have left with the following impressions. Great presentation. The staff is usually friendly, the menu always looks tasty, great atomsphere, good live band. Lots of good looking people eat here.

However the food is a rip off. Dishes range from $15-$40, and appetizers and drinks are very expensive for what you get. I'd my biggest gripe is that if you order a seafood pasta for $17-20 dollars, then you should have more then 6 pieces of shrimp in the pasta. If you order a chicken breat dish, a side of vegetables or even mash potatoes shouldn't cost another $3-4. Also many of their side dishes are not prepared fresh. You can tell their garlic mash potatoes come from a pouch. The chicken dish we ordered came with the chicken breast pounded out to make it appear bigger and more tender. Of course what that really means is they appear to use smaller, cheaper ingridents.

Overall its a good meal but doesn't seem to live up the price, seems like you are really paying for the dock side dining.

bad customer service experience

My only visit there was a bit unique, so take this with a grain of salt...

My 10-year high school reunion was held at Bella Vita (a swanky spot for a reunion!). I was very impressed with the location and found the few little starters that were included to be generally tasty, but my concern is that when I checked my account balance the next week... I found four identical charges from them (I'd started a tab at the bar, tipping $1 for each drink).

I called my credit card company to alert them of the mistake... and over the course of the next few months, there were over a dozen various charges and credits (some of which seemed to have no rhyme or reason - i.e. credits in amounts not even close to what was disputed). I attempted to contact Bella Vita via email to straighten this out... and never received a response.

Over $200 wound up being charged to me (!)... though in the end, I believe we ended up more or less even.

Perhaps I should have just contacted Bella Vita in the first place... but it seemed very odd & not very professionally handled. I'll sure pay in cash if I ever go back!!!

Collaboration Party Band

My wife and I went there on 1/18/08 to have dinner just to get away for the evening from an exhausting week and ended staying there another couple of hours to listen to this AWESOME band. The musicians and vocalists were great! They covered a good variety of music from the 70's to today and anything from Billy Joel to Jazz. We had a great time and look forward to hearing them again hopefully in the near future.

Great place for Cougar huntin

Pretty nice little bar upstairs. A little expensive but not crazy. The staff was cool too. I just remember when they got in trouble for health reasons last year.

You're paying for the location

My buddy has a boat on the marina, so in the summer I find myself here more than often than I'd like. It nice to have a drink after being out on the water (if i'm not already 'toasted') and this is the only place with an "on the water" experience.

I haven't really ever had a really bad experience, but I'm just never impressed. I don't mind paying more for good food/service, but here the prices just don't match the quality.

When we sit on the back deck to enjoy some drinks, I find that I always have to go hunt down the server in order to get another drink, even when the crowd is sparse. I mean, I'm paying like $4.50 for a stale Corona, don't make me work for it.

The atmosphere and view are good though, and they sometimes make up for everything else.

Bella Vita Ain't So Bella

The notion of enjoying dinner and drinks outside in the open air overlooking a sparkling lake---of relaxing and laughing as the sinking sun stretches shadows toward the water on a temperate summer evening.

Such was the draw for my friends and I last Saturday. Such was the draw to Bella Vita.

Without doubt, Bella Vita Ristorante, 11699 Fall Creek Rd, is an aesthetically pleasing place---the restaurant's clubhouse façade belies the crisp, contemporary dining room and bar area within. Tall, east-facing windows provide inside guests a nice view of action both on the party deck and the marina below.

And with a near panoramic of the glimmering Geist as its backdrop, the atmosphere out on the patio is main attraction. To be sure, after my friends and I were seated in a prime spot on the deck, I was instantly seduced by the summer sights (folks mingling and drinking) and sounds (a DJ delivering music, the subtle susurrance of the water) synonymous with an ideal meal outdoors; and the sensations held promise of sustention.

That is before the actual dinner service began.

And those momentary drifts into delusion would prove to be the highlight of the evening.

Since the majority of this essay focuses on the actual service, I'll drop my stabs at lofty prose and get down to a brief digression: The food wasn't bad. But when contrasted with the prices, the cuisine sails into the realm of mediocrity.

The chicken Marsala ($18), while delivered chilly with a few florets of overcooked broccoli, had decent flavor; the 3-course, Ultimo Special ($30) featured a shockingly dry, herb-covered salmon filet which was the epitome of "petite"; and Pollo alla Romano ($17) were a lightly-breaded pair of chicken paillards served over fettuccini alfredo which---again, juxtaposed with the price---proved straightforward and unsurprising.

And then there was the tortellini. But I'm getting ahead of myself---allow me back up.

After initially being seated on the patio, our drinks from the bar were delivered quickly; but there seemed to be some confusion about where (or perhaps who) our server was. Our waiter was an amiable fellow, but he disappeared for considerable lengths of time. And this was before we ordered appetizers (Pane Granchio: imitation crabmeat on toast covered with shredded cheese for $13).

While never inquiring about it, on several instances we were promised fresh bread from the oven. And two warm, parmesan-topped loaves arrived. At the end of the night. Along with our bills. Again, I'm flashing forward.

Our menus were spread across the table for nearly 30 minutes before we placed our dinner order; two from our party requested (which after a week of reliving the disappointing experience, has now become) the infamous Tortellini Michelangelo ($16).

Only one of the tortellini arrived at the table, which---after being assured it was en route---seemed like no big deal. Alas, if 'twere true.

Again, our server was nowhere in sight, and most of us held off eating, anticipating the arrival of the pasta dish. This went on for an obscene amount of time. Eventually, we spotted someone making their rounds from table to table, chatting with guests, and who we assumed to be a manager. So we motioned him to our table.

The dinner's death knell came in the form of this manager---let's call him "A".

Still missing a meal, "A" promised our friend that he'd deal with the problem forthwith, and he proceeded inside to take care of it. Like other illusions that evening, "A" would take a page from our server's disappearing act. After a while, I got up from the table and entered the restaurant, where I saw "A" conversing with a table near the kitchen. I reminded him about the missing tortellini entrée. Again, there seemed to be some confusion about where the food was, and "A" stated our friend's meal would be comped, which I announced after returning to my seat.

But by this point, our tortelliniless friend's husband---who'll go under the sobriquet of, I don't know, let's say "Ryan"---was far from impressed. Another 6 or 8 minutes passed and still no entrée. Now "Ryan" headed inside the restaurant. Eventually, both "A" and "Ryan" returned, with the latter looking more concerned than the former.

"A" presented our two friends with a $30 gift card, and encouraged their return, while "Ryan" attempted to illustrate the tepidity of the entire effort. Verbally, more transpired; and at one point the manager, "A", actually invoked a mind-numbing statistic about how much money the restaurant would rake in that evening, as if sharing this would somehow anesthetize our experience or impress us to the point of flattery.

Neither transpired that night. Exit "A", stage right.

The meal's comical pièce de résistance was the dessert, which---as part of my brother's Ultimo Special---should have been strawberry shortcake. Instead he was presented with two scoops of vanilla ice cream in a Styrofoam to-go box. He lives about 45 minutes away. The tortellini arrived as well, boxed up.

(On the aside, from time to time throughout the evening I glanced down to the dock, where several boat owners enjoyed the easy evening with drinks, cigars, and each other's company. Yet on several instances I observed the lounging, blücher-wearing boaters, along with their linen-clad guests, tossing spent cigarette butts into the water along the dock. And while it does seem a touch trivial, I'm still puzzled and troubled by this indecent dichotomy: That some of these folks (that is, older people who should know better) who actually partake in the aquatic benefits of Geist---a place which ostensibly prides itself on remaining pristine---clearly behave with such carelessness and brow-furrowing insouciance. But I digress.)

There's a dodgy dissonance between quality and quantity at Bella Vita. The food was not remarkable, but the prices and service, sadly, were.

Here's the parting caveat: Don't give into induced delusions. If you do so, it might be too late before you realize you've wandered off the dock, left with nothing more than a Styrofoam box full of soggy food and an empty wallet.

Very Poor

Today, my wife and I thought we would try something new, so we went across the bridge to the Bella Vita. Let me tell you about our experience:

First, our waiter took our drink orders. When he returned with the drinks, he spilled an entire drink on my son. I went ahead and ordered for he and I and left my wife and daughter to run him home, bath him, and return. Coke was in his hair, completely soaking his shirt, pants, down to his undergarments. Then, upon returning, our drinks were not even right, we had diet coke and not regular. The server stated it was because the "machine was switched." He corrected this. Then, he brought our dinners. The cooks completely forgot the sauce on our pasta and to top things off, I had not yet received my salad. As my wife was completed with her salad and my children were now eating their food, I opted to eat my dinner. When I had completed everything from my dinner, my waiter finally brought my salad. Yes, he apologized, but that was it. I expected, when I received my ticket to see a substantial discount for all the trouble. The fact that our meal there even cost us an extra trip home, a bath for my son, and an extra load of laundry would have been substantial for this, not to mention the other problems we had! However, there was no discount. I asked about one and our waiter took the ticket, but came back stating conveniently, "I couldn't find my manager." He handed me change and we left.

Not good.

This place sucks! Nothing but a poor meat-market catering to the over-priveledged, less than beautiful people that consider the Geist experience the pinnacle of their existence.

If you want to go for the food---forget about it. It's lousy. If you just want to drink and hit on bored divorcees, this place is perfect.