Impellizzeri's Pizza

My husband and I went out Friday night, Feb 1, 2012 and decided to go to Impellizzeri's for dinner. It wasn't packed, slammed and nothing was going on at the Yum! Center, so I figured it was a regular Friday night crowd.
                 He order the lasagna which had hardly any lasagna pasta in it. It was filled with plenty of cheese and topped with ground up beef. My husband said it resembled the flavor of Hamburger Helper.
                 I had the 10 hot wings and they were not a messy kind of sauce. A little dry for my liking and they used red peper flakes to make the wings hot.
After being seated in one of the back booths, our server came over and asked if we were ready to order. We said no but did order 2 beers. Some time passed and the manager saw us sitting there and retrieved our beers for us at the bar and served us. Finally our actual server arrives and asked for our food order.
               About 20 mins. pass and an expo (someone who expedites the food orders) walks by and my husband says to me "There goes our food" as it passed our table. Three minutes later, the expo girl comes by and finally delivers our food. We saw our server walking past us several times, but not once did she come by our table to ask if we need anything else or if the food was good.
               As I ate my 2nd hot wing, I ran out of beer, as did my husband. We set our empty glasses at the edge of our table in hopes our server would walk by and see our thirst dilema; however, a busser came by and swiped the emptys. So we sat there with no beverages or signs we even had a beverage. Still, NO  server to be found. We finally flagged down the manager who initially served us our beers. We asked for only water and at that point we were done.
              The manager comes by and says she has our beer we ordered at the bar coming? We looked at her like she was crazy because we never ordered anything else. She said well they were on the house. As I already stated, we were done. I looked at her and said no thank you, we ordered water from her (the manager) because we had only seen our server twice and now we would like a box.
              The manager knew we had been done wrong as she only charged us for half our meal. If my husband had not already put the $18 charge on a card, I would have dropped a $20 and walked out. I was overly generous in tipping for our server who came to the table a total of 3 times: 1. Drink order  2. Food order 3. Asked if we were ready for our check. I left her two $1 bills and four quarters.
               2 bite, 2 minute rule!!! Check on your tables!! Obviously, she wasn't working for tips.

Friend and I had some time to kill before a concert at the Yum! Center (came from out of town) and we decided to grab a few beers at Impellizzeri's because it's the first place we came across and they had an empty bar and lots of TVs.  

Five hours, a barrage of craft beers and an order of the best cheese breadsticks later, we hadn't moved from our barstools and the place was completely packed.  Definitely a good pre-Yum spot if you're in town for a game/concert.

I went while visiting Louisville with a co-worker one night after work.  I grew up in Louisville and had experienced the awesomeness of the original Impellizzeri's on Bardstown Road when it was basically just a bright lit storefront, and I really looked forward to trying it out again.

I was surprised to see the nice new location on Main Street.  The atmosphere was warm and woodsy, with a big stage but no performers that night.  However it was pretty loud in there with other office folks cutting loose at a nearby table.

I hate to say but our waiter was pretty rude.  Any question we asked was met with sarcasm.  Question: "How big is the Chopped Salad?"  Answer... "As big as the Ceasar Salad."  Naturally we were asking in case it was served family style for the 2 of us ladies to share.  There were a few episodes like that with him, and we were both put off and felt a bit offended.  Why do that to your customers?  It must be tough for some folks to be friendly and hospitable.

After getting through the pain of dealing with our snippy waiter, her Chopped Salad and my Garden Salad came fresh and tasty.  Then the Sampler Pizza was served and we had no problem putting down a few slices.  However, it wasn't nearly as thick and heavy as I remember them to be.  For a Small, 9 Topping Pizza and $30.00, I expected that rich, thick, dream pizza I used to get, but it wasn't a whole lot better than your average pizza.

I'm glad to see them doing so well, but it seems to have come at the cost of quality and small business friendliness.