We recently dined here and had a really bad experience from start to finish. Â Our drink order was screwed up. Â The bread was stale. Â The pizza was worse than frozen pizza. Â All the appetizers were universally bad (almost everything was cold and the mussels tasted rancid). Â The pasta was mushy. Â The entrees were forgettable at best. Â Lastly, the prices were through the roof!
Review Source:Created an account to write this review. Â Terrible food, terrible (young and inexperienced) service. Â We came all the way from Glen Lake to give this restaurant a shot, while the drive is breathtakingly beautiful the experience was not worth the trip. Â
Mussels were inedible, mozzarella al forno was small cold mozzarella balls in lukewarm subpar tomato sauce, pizza was cafeteriaesque at best. Â Bunch of 'Italian" stuff for sale in the lobby--ugh, very Cracker Barrel. Â Lights too bright, ambiance all wrong, drinks watery, prices sinful for the quality. Â Clientele seems to be a much older crowd. Â
IF you are considering making the trip to come here--in a word--don't. Â There are way too many excellent restaurants on the peninsula to spend an evening here...alas, we wasted the last night of our vacation (and a bunch of money) in this dining room.
Their self-purported hype and pretension only add to the ridiculously bitter aftertaste of this place. Â Bella Fortuna: no thanks.
We hosted the rehearsal dinner for our son's wedding here. I can't say enough about what a great experience it was. The manager, Vicki, accommodated us with only 3 weeks notice (another restaurant had inadvertently double booked us). She worked closely with the chef and me to come up with an awesome menu. We held a cocktail hour before dinner on the lovely patio (complete with a Bocce court), then a several-course dinner was served. The food was outstanding and was served with perfect timing. They even quickly whipped up a delicious alternative for a vegetarian guest of ours for whom I hadn't planned ahead. The wait staff was very prompt and gracious. Â The "house" wine is their own label imported from Tuscany and was excellent. Would definitely recommend to anyone visiting the Leelanau Peninsula!
Review Source:Beautiful and comfortable ambiance but lackluster food  much more attention needs to be given the quality of food for the prices paid.......Presentation is good but taste is missing,,,several chefs have come and gone since its opening in 2012..entire staffs have left the restaurant in a lurch...this year's season ( 2013 ) held promise but the new chef is not yet up to speed and the outlook is uncertain..We wil try again but the pizza is below standards..the coffee is bad...the Misty salad was very good and the entrees disappointing.......Keep trying...Rome wasn;t built in a day...neither was Florence......
Review Source:Beautiful restaurant that serves bad food at a high price.
Four of us ordered dinner and they only brought entrees for three of us.
They forgot about my wifes order.
15 minutes later she got her walleye which she could not eat it was so bad.
I ordered crispy duck which was bland and not crispy.
Oh, well-there are plenty of other choices in the area.
O PS we ordered the Lasagna of eggplant and never got it: later realized they charged us for it anyway.
UPDATE: we heard through the grapevine that the owner are "so italian" they don't even speak the language. Â And that owning a restaurant is "whew! alot of work!" do we get the picture here? Yes we too longed for a new great place in the area to eat, but this is not it. Â We heard also that all the staff just quit. Â Hmm. Wonder why.....
Lots of pretty weak reviews so far for a restaurant that promised so much, and, despite my hopes for a  new star here in Leelanau County, I'll agree that this appears to be just another over-touted, overpriced mediocrity.
The service was lass than stellar. Despite being there before noon and despite the place being only 25% full, it took them 45 minutes or so to get our food to the table. I wonder what they do on a busy Saturday night?
The food was OK, but only OK, and definitely pricey given both its quantity and quality. We had Mozzarella al Forno for an appetizer -- a golf ball-sized hunk of mozzarella with a strip of prosciutto  wrapped around it in a dish with some tomato sauce. 2 bites for each of us, $8.00. Tasty, yes, but not THAT tasty.
I selected an Italian Panini sandwich for my main course from the very limited lunch menu (no pasta on the lunch menu???). Maybe I'm just unenlightened, but in my experience a panini is grilled. Not a Bella Fortuna panini! Â Mine was just meat, cheese, and onions between a couple of slices of fresh bread.
Aside from the fact that it wasn't grilled, the other strange thing about that sandwich is that, rather than being layered, the different contents were all arranged in separate areas of the sandwich -- the prosciutto was in one quadrant, the salami in another, the onions in another, etc. I don't know if that was intentional (perhaps that's how it's done for the cognoscenti in Florence and Boca Grande), but I wish I had known this before I started eating the sandwich. I'd certainly have rearranged the contents to distribute them evenly and I would have enjoyed it much more.
My wife enjoyed her $12 personal-sized pizza, but I wasn't impressed with the bite I tried. KInd of a funny crust and a strange taste. I certainly wouldn't order it. Definitely not on a par with the goumet pizzas that Chef Todd used to make at Sgt. Pepperoni's in Suttons Bay a couple years ago.
We ARE going to give this another shot, because the dinner menu is far more extensive (but also much more expensive). It would be nice -- oh heck, WONDERFUL -- to have a really outstanding restaurant nearby. We used to make the drive over to Tapawingo regularly and never begrudged spending our $150+ because the food was incredible. It looks like it would be easy to reach that level at dinner in Bella Fortuna. I sure hope the food warrants it.
If it doesn't, I wonder how they plan to survive once summer ends and the fudgies go home? I have difficulty picturing throngs of locals eager to spend that much money on so-so food.
Not ready for prime time. Â They need to shut the place down for a couple of weeks and retrain the staff on how to serve a fine dining meal, as well as how to handle service failure.
They couldn't figure out who got what item or what order to serve the items to people. This was especially disappointing because they say they will serve either American or Italian style with the salads (before or after the main course), however, they didn't do either, they served it in the middle of the meal. Â On a couple occasions they just brought dishes out and basically threw them in front of you. Then, when the issue was was raised, they only made excuses.
As for the food, the gnuuni was awful, pure butter, and this is what they said was the house speciality. The ice tea was more like water than tea and the excuse given was that it was herbal tea. So, why then make it with herbal tea if it doesn't work?
The Tuscan soup and the olive appetizer were both very good. Others at the table enjoyed the mussels too. So, there is hope on the food side.
Bottom line was there was no management in sight and no indication management was even paying attention to what was going on.
PS: Don't let them seat you in the bar area if you plan to talk at dinner.
We had two dinners at Bella Fortuna and had a positive experience both times. Â Both evenings were with a large party and the waitstaff performed well considering they were a young and newly trained group. Â The meals were well prepared and presented. Â The pricing is quite high, but there appears to be considerable support at this time from the surrounding community.
Review Source:We surprised our visiting children with reservations at this new restaurant. They were excited, especially since they'd had a positive experience at the chef's previous restaurant. But the evening went downhill right after the appetizers -- our son ordered an entree, waited...waited...waited...only to be told by the waitress that the restaurant was out of that dish. He tried again with another entree...another wait...another disappointment. When he asked to speak to the manager, instead of acknowledging a problem and making things right the manager basically threw the hapless waitperson under the bus. (It turned out that the owners had come in earlier with a large party that, along with a large dinner crowd, seemed to have blindsided the kitchen.) Â Surrounding tables also seemed to be experiencing problems. It was such a disappointing experience that we cancelled reservations for dinner later in the week. Startups may indeed be hell...but I hope this establishment can take control of its inventory and ordering issues before too many other diners have a negative experience.
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