Café Fontanella & Wine Bar

The food is mediocre at best. The service was mediocre.  I ordered a salad and soup combo.  i ordered a salad that had three ingredients: apples, Gorgonzola cheese and walnuts.  My salad came with no apples. The soup was brought to the table and only then I was told it had changed from meatball soup to cream of asparagus. My husbands order was just eggplant coated in sauce and cheese.  Not good.  

The best part of the meal was the pizza dough my kids were given to play with.  Very nice touch and we all enjoyed it! That is the only reason for the second star.

We had a gift certificate from <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Frestaurant.com&s=c5fe485af4df376130bee54f875814d79c4d7913e1258123b1206d2bdbf4873b" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://restaurant.com</a> (the only reason we chose to eat there) that they  wouldn't accept it because the beers we drank were on special but one get one free.  That negated the offer.  So we spent $50 on a below average lunch. Boo!  

Probably will not go back. My voucher will just go to waste...

Have eaten here 3 times.  First time it was a motorcycle ride destination for my wife, myself and another couple.  The food was good but the service was a bit slow.  The second time was my wife, myself and our yorkie.  Again the food was good but the service was extremely slow.  They were having a concert that night so we chalked it up to being shorthanded.  We tried again last night with the pup again and it took several minutes for the hostess to show up at the hostess stand.  Once seated, it was obvious that others were getting frustrated with the slow service.  We waited nearly ten minutes and had not seen a server so we left.

Do you like bluegrass music?  Italian food? Margaritas?Juxtaposition? Welcome to Fontanella!

One of these stars is solely for the overly apologetic waitress who seemed embarrassed.  This place was one hot mess after another, from clientele to service to atmosphere to food.

The menu is Italian... but they have a weekly margarita night?  They advertise live music, but we were caught off guard by the (way too) loud bluegrass band basically playing the "O Brother, Where Art Thou" soundtrack.  The number of contradictions this place has to offer is hilarious.  

Wine selection wasn't great for a place that calls themselves a wine bar, but they do have wine (a red and a white) made specifically for them by Arrington Vineyards and only available there... except they were out of the red when we tried to order it.

Our appetizer and salads came out quickly, so we were optimistic... but then our wine only showed up once we were done with those and waiting on entrees.  We worried we'd have no time to actually enjoy our wine since it came so late, but then we had at least another 40 minutes before our entrees showed up.  Thanks?  My entree was supposed to come with pasta, so I asked the waitress when it did not and she grumbled about the kitchen and went to check on it. It showed up another 10 minutes later.

The food was ok.  I didn't love anything, but didn't hate it (except for the dessert - stay tuned for that). Just kind of average Italian. The sauce was pretty much just plain tomato sauce, nothing to it.  

During our meal the waitress asked if we like tiramisu because she wanted to get us a free dessert for our wait.  We agreed, but ended up later asking for it to go since we'd already been there over 2 hours at that point with no end in sight.  She brought something that looked like flan drowning in hershey's syrup and said she had put on some 'extra chocolate' for us for our trouble. ummmm...?  Yeah, it was gross. If I wanted to eat hershey's chocolate syrup with a spoon I would have stayed home alone in pajamas on the couch.

After our meal/before the bill showed up a manager came to our table to make sure the hostess had told us on our way in that the credit card machine was down.  She had not. And who carries cash? Although in the hostess's defense, maybe it was still working when we got there 3 hours earlier?  They had to manually take down the card number to run it later. (Please don't steal my boyfriend's identity, strange Italian redneck people!)

The kicker is that we chose the place in large part because we got a 20% off coupon at Taste of Music City... we forgot it at home.