East Side Mario’s

Came for dinner at around 6:15pm on a Thursday. I’ve been living out of the country for 4yrs. I remember ESM fondly. Well…
The food tonight was OK. Nothing to knock your socks off, but not bad either. Just as I remembered.
The atmosphere was LOUD. That too, was as I remembered, however there *were* an awful lot of sub 10yr olds there tonight. Disproportionately so in fact.
But why only 2 stars? Our server. Good God he was horrid. I’ve been around mentally disadvantaged children, and they would have looked like Mensa candidates compared to this guy. 2 out of the 3 of us actually had to POINT to our menu item we wanted to order. And this guy wasn’t an immigrant or something. This was a white guy, with English supposedly as his first language. I also had to repeat my drink 3 times (a Tanqueray Collins — Tom Collins with Tanqueray gin). He *still* couldn’t grasp it, so I actually had to list the ingredients 1 by 1 for him.
I’m not going to mention his name or station because I’m not about getting people fired, but of ESM management reads this, you have some SERIOUS training issues and SERIOUSLY need to retrain your service staff.
It was so bad that my parents who are semi-​regulars there said they won’t likely be back and while I’m in town for the next 3 weeks, I certainly don’t think I’ll drop by again.
P. S. — there were 3 groups waiting at the door when we arrived. Ours made the 4^th. Nobody saw a host/​hostess for over 11 minutes (assuming the group that said they had been waiting for 5 minutes were accurate, we waited for 6 additional minutes before a host showed up, but only after someone from the group waiting the longest got irritated and asked if anyone worked there). Seriously.

After a long 7 hour drive we just wanted some place chill, inexpensive to eat and relatively good service. We were in the mall and decided on Eastside because it was close and from experience we figured it would meet these requirements. So here we go… we entered from the mall and were greeted with a kind sign that directed us to go to the front for a hostess to seat us. Without any additional direction we wandered through the dinning room and eventually made it to the front to fine 3 people already waiting without a host. We waiting for 5 minutes when another could came and seated themselves because they found a friend in the crowd. Then finally a host came… so we thought. She asked all 4 couples how many people in our parties and set 2 menus aside for us then left. We watched her attend to other customers who weer already seated and eating. Its has now about 10 minutes. Another host? Came and ask who arrived first and left to sear them. We and the 2 other couples remained waiting. Another 5 minutes and no one came by… i went to find someone. Apparently there was 3 hostesses on that night and as I brought this to the other waiters attention another host? Arrived to seat us. Because of this our wait time was not addressed because we were seated now after over 15 minutes of waiting.
So overall? Im sorry but we had a very bad experience here. Starting from our long wait to be seated and service was very slow and the water assumed we have been there before by not giving full information about the menu escpeia5when i already has a question about the salad.
Unfortunately i would not recommend this particular location or return to it.

Kids love this place. Been there several times and always been great. Recommended for family with kids

I went here for lunch today with 3 of my girlfriends. My experience was as I expected it would be: overall acceptable but nothing outstanding.
I had the Tuscan Chicken Salad ($ 14.99) and a Strawberry Passionfruit Lemonade ($ 3.99).
I enjoyed my salad overall. It had romaine lettuce, red onions, walnuts, goat cheese, oranges, sliced dried figs and grilled chicken. The dressing was a balsamic vinaigrette. The ingredients were fresh and the portion size was acceptable. Not so small that I felt ripped off, and it had a generous portion of walnuts and goat cheese. The chicken portion was on the dinky side though, very thin slices. I loved the sweetness and slight chewiness of the figs, the creaminess of the goat cheese and the crunch of the walnuts. Texture-​wise the salad was excellent, and the flavours mingled well together. I asked for the dressing on the side and it came as requested. They gave me a lot of dressing though. I used maybe a quarter of it. The dressing was full of herbs and spices and I liked it.
The lemonade was so incredibly sweet. I had to dilute it with my entire glass of water for it to even be drinkable. One of the other girls also had the same drink and she agreed that it was too sweet. Another girlfriend had a virgin strawberry daiquiri and she said her drink was way too sweet as well.
Our server was competent (she was able to answer questions about the menu, our orders were correct and she checked up on us), but she did not smile once during her interactions with us and she seemed really disinterested in working there. Maybe she has other stuff going on in her life, but I felt like we were an inconvenience to her and that she hated her job.
Décor is typical of big chain restaurants.
This location is inside St. Laurent Shopping Mall. There’s an entrance from the mall and an entrance from outside. I mention this because we said we were going to meet at the entrance and I did not know that there were 2 different entrances, and we ended up not all waiting at the same entrance.
Lots of free parking in the mall parking lot.
East Side Mario’s would not be my first choice of places to have lunch, but it was conveniently located for the 4 of us, and since it’s attached to a mall we were able to walk around and shop a bit afterwards. It’s also a safe restaurant if you are with a group with varying tastes. I think everyone would be able to find something on the menu that they could eat. They have vegetarian items as well as «gluten-​friendly» items (they can’t guarantee no cross-​contamination in the kitchen, but the ingredients in these items do not contain gluten).

Went to East Side Mario’s today ordered a panzoli. I asked the waiter to exclude the mozzarella cheese. Waited half an hour for my food to be ready, when it came to the table it had mozzarella cheese (a lot) sent it back as I am lactose intolerant. After another half an hour the waiter finally returned with my dish, which sadly again had mozzarella cheese (a lot). Sent this back again and just requested the bill rather than wait. Waiter comes back to inform me that the chef states it’s just raw stretchy dough in the middle of my panzoli. Stretchy dough that happens to look … Smell… And even taste like mozzarella… So when I informed the waiter no. it’s definitely cheese, the staff got irritated. The menu states Canadian panzoli which include pepperoni, mushrooms, sauce and mozzarella cheese… Nothing states you are going to eat raw sticky stringy dough that looks and tastes like cheese.
Poor service, terrible food, I won’t be back !.

Love the unlimited bread and salad but the entrees are hit or miss for quality and taste. Service is the same… excellent one visit and sub par the next. Great location but not a restaurant I would seek out.

We’ve been here a few times and always find them very friendly with the kids. The kids love the colouring sheets and the teeny little ice creams they get on every visit. Service and food and décor are all usually pretty good and reasonably priced.
If your looking for a deal they usually have good prices options on certain days or times as well though it’s not expensive on the usual menu compared to lots of other places and they do a caa discount too so don’t forget to show your card

First day arriving in Ottawa in the middle of nowhere, so we decided to find a restaurant near our hotel within walking distant. Had no idea we were actually 10 minutes away from one of the biggest malls in Ottawa and inside the mall, there was East Side Mario’s. Feeling kind of tired, hungry and adapting to the new city, we decided to play it safe and came to this chained restaurant.
East Side Mario’s is East Side Mario’s, nothing too special. I ordered a coke with my pasta and it came with salad and garlic bread as complementary. The DIY pasta I ordered had Italian Sausages with spaghetti in Bolognese sauce. Pasta was good, not great and it was VERY oily. Server was okay as well and did let us know what was the daily special and fans favorites, but I didn’t really feel for the setting, it was very dim and if you have been reading my reviews, i tend to hate dim restaurants.
There is really nothing more I can say about this place. If you want a quick dine-​in dinner after shopping in the mall and do not want to drive yet, this can be a choice for you.

I was looking for a italian restaurant to take my nieces to. I found East Mario’s to be very convenient since it is located inside the St. Laurent mall. The place was packed and since we were a group of eight, we had to wait about 45 minutes, but since it was located in the mall, we did some shopping until they texted us that our table was ready. The food was excellent and fast arriving. My only complain was our waiter, he was unfriendly with no eye contact whatsoever and seems to be in rush to get out of his shift as soon as possible, otherwise, everything was delicious and fresh, most of the entrée comes with unlimited salad or soup. I am hopping next time I go there I will get a better waiter.

Very good for a restaurant chain. Service was attentive and very fast, food was good, décor like other Mario restaurants. I would give it a higher rating if they brought back their unlimited pasta offer.

Very poor service on this visit today. It took a very long time to get our drinks and refills. We had to ask for refills repeatedly before they showed up. The complimentary garlic bread and salad came to our table, but there was no offer for fresh parmesan on the salad. The salad was very lightly dressed with minimal amounts of caesar dressing, no cheese, and very few croutons and bacon bits. The «unlimited» salad and bread wasn’t — they brought it out once and that was it.
The chicken parmesan sandwich was okay. The bun was very tough on the top. As I said in my last review, it could have included something more than just bun, chicken, pasta sauce, and cheese. Unfortunately they haven’t updated their menu.