Cucina Toscana

Recommends

storkmd

Joined 5 years ago

Best Italian food in SLC. This place is consistently great. The food is prepared to perfection and the service is very good. It is loud, not very romantic but a great place to go with friends to celebrate. Salt Lake City is unfortunately not known for its eateries, but this place would survive in any city and would compete well in San Francisco or NYC.

Recommends

aaronwernli

Joined 5 years ago

Fantastic Italian. Great Italian. Fantastic atmosphere. If you ever get to meet the owner, he is very friendly and makes you feel welcome. There is no Italian like this in Salt Lake. I highly recommend this place.

Doesn't Recommend

owzhat

Joined 5 years ago

Food good, but not great. Service terrible, unless you are the owner's Pisan.. The only positive I can give is that they kept my water glass filled.

Pretty decor true. Food was good, yes, but not great, and especially not at the price you are paying for it. Small portions as well.

This is the kind of place that easily impresses people that are wowed by a noisy chaotic atmosphere and snooty toffs.

They screwed up our reservation, sat us right next to the kitchen as punishment for their mistake, and screwed up our special dessert order that we requested days before, without apology.

We were very, very unhappy when we left, and felt sorry for the people waiting to get in.

Doesn't Recommend

RudyT

Joined 5 years ago

Eat at Biaggi's Ristorante Italiano Instead!!!. I called a week ahead for reservations. Asked if they were able to make a birthday cake for us. They said yes, the bakery next door would do that. We knew things weren't starting well when they had written down 13 instead of 3 for the reservation. They were not happy to tear apart the tables. We were given a table in the busiest area in front of the kitchen. Well, it was noisy, extremely hot, the food was so-so (worst Caesar salad ever!) and over priced. We were greeted with blank stares when they asked if we wanted dessert and we asked for our cake. 30 minutes and a few "we're getting the cake ready" later we were served 3 slices of the menu cake with no explanation!!! Had we known we weren't getting "our" cake we would have left without dessert. Still no apologies or explanations, but lots of waiters and the owner running around attending "important" customers. Obviously you need to know the owner to be treated decently. It would have been nice if some kind of customer service was apparent. A simple "We are so sorry about the mix-up but we don't have your cake. Would you care to order from the dessert menu for complimentary desserts?" A good restaurant would have been up front about things instead of trying to cover up an obvious mistake. We are never going back and will tell everyone we know NOT to waste their time and money, but to go to Biaggi's Ristorante Italiano at the Gateway instead. Now THIS is an elegant restaurant with excellent food, a great staff, and believe it or not you can have a conversation without shouting or dying of heat stroke.

Recommends

CityM

Joined 5 years ago

The best italian restaurant on the west coast!!!. I recently moved from NYC to Salt Lake and I was invited to partake in a sampling at Cucina Toscana and was blown away from the moment I stepped in the door. The restaurant is somewhat of a "hole in the wall" restaurant and you are surrounded by beautiful decor, plants and accommodating staff. Justin, the manager was very pleasant and catered to our every need and consistently checked in to see how everything was. I have never seen such service. We ordered the Caesar salad, which is prepared at your table with tons of fresh ingredients. I was at first weary about the anchovies, but the waiter assured me I would love it and I wouldn't be able to even taste any fish. He was right! There was no fish after taste and everything blended perfectly. Next was their pasta sampling which was an experience in it's own. The handmade ravioli was to die for and the gnocchi in tomato sauce was a delight. Both pastas were perfectly matched with tasty sauces that complimented them. Next was the main dish - chicken saltimbocca. Never have so many ingredients tasted so good. The chicken was prepared perfectly and the side potatoes were delicous with the sauce. The sauce was different in that it had a lemon after taste. I hate lemon, but enjoyed this explosion of flavor in my mouth. To end the meal we had fresh made tiramisu. It was like eating air, it was so rich and fluffy. I never have liked Tiramisu, but after eating theirs, I wanted more! I don't drink coffee, but my husband said it was the best he's ever had.

Go to Cucina Toscana, you will love the environment and enjoy the food. I have told everyone at work, home and across the states about my experience and I hope you will go their too. Let's keep this restaurant alive forever so we may experience NYC food in the heart of Utah!

Doesn't Recommend

pjasper

Joined 7 years ago

Not Worth the Wait. I went to Cucina Toscana as part of a group of six. Our reservation was for 8:00pm, but they kept us waiting until 9:00 before seating us. It wouldn't have been so bad if they had a bar where we could sit, but we had to stand in the crowded lobby (obviously we weren't the only ones kept waiting) by the front door when it was snowing outside. After about 45 minutes they brought us some mineral water and a plate of bruschetta (which comes free on the table), but it didn't really make up for the wait. We'd been skiing during the day and were starving by the time we did get seated. The menu is strange too: the dishes are scattered all over the place. There were about six different versions of veal scallopini, each in a separate part of the menu. It makes me think the disorganization isn't just limited to the reservations. I don't know how this place wins awards for being the best restaurant in SLC.

Recommends

ruenthai

Joined 5 years ago

Best Fine Dining Experience In Town. Best Food

Best Wines list

Great Service (the real fine dining service)

Recommed to close the menu and tell the server to do the testing menu is the way to go.

Must try The handmade pasta

Ravioli and Gnocci The Best !

Doesn't Recommend

logamnosis

Joined 7 years ago

Atrocious service, uneven food. My fiance unfortunately took me here for my thirtieth birthday. Firstly the hostess tried to imply that we didn't have a reservation and we had to point out that our name was in the reservation book in front of her. Then we had to wait 35 minutes after the time of our reservation to get seated without an apology. The closest we got was "We're very busy tonight". While the server, Ty, was nice enough, we felt rushed, he seemed to be running back and forth between too many tables and he did not follow up when we made less than stellar remarks about the food. My starter -- a salad with tuna, scallops and octopus -- lacked the octopus and was so sour that it was difficult to eat. It was an interesting dish, but not a very successful one. My main dish was a fettuccine with a porcini and meat sauce, and while the hand made fettuccine was excellent, I've had better sauces at chain restaurants. The sauce was excessively watery and tasteless. Overall, this restaurant was too noisy to talk and too frenetic too enjoy one's meal.

Doesn't Recommend

feedbacktoSLC

Joined 5 years ago

What a disappointment!. I went to Cucina Toscana several years ago and had a wonderful dining experience, wow, has that changed. We went with a dear friend from out of town and raved about the food only to be greeted with a 20 minute wait even though we had reservations, service that was fairly unattentive, cold food and the worst of all, we dessert. We requested a dessert menu - the server said that they don't have a dessert menu but recited our available dessert options from memory. Thinking that perhaps we might get the quality we expected, we ordered cannoli, pistachio gelato and the evening special which was a chocolate mousse cake. The mousse cake was nothing more than a lava cake with some vanilla ice cream, the pistachio gelato was something that tasted more like peanut butter than pistachio and the one cannoli was average at best. Then came the ticket - they charged $11.50 for one cannoli, $10.50 for one scoop of gelato and $15.50 for a microwaved lava cake! We could not believe it. No wonder they don't offer you a dessert menu - no one would order if they knew the price! I have lived in LA and Chicago and I have been to some of the top restaurants both of those cities have to offer including Charlie Trotters and I have never been charged $15.50 for a dessert of any kind, let alone one that I could have made in my kitchen. Needless to say, I won't ever go back to Cucina Toscana - SLC, look for a better place to find authentic Italian food.

Recommends

itthat1girl

Joined 8 years ago

Spectacular Only Begins to Describe.... What started as a bad experience turned out to be one of the most amazing dining experiences of my life. My boyfriend and I made a reservation for my birthday and arrived promptly only to be kept waiting for over a half an hour. We alerted the hostess that we would like to cancel our reservation and turned to leave. Upon getting to our car in the parking lot, the manager of the restaurant ran out after us adamant about us staying and enjoying our night - going as far as to say that he wanted to pay for our meal, he didn't want anyone to leave unhappy. We of course agreed to the kind gesture and went back inside. The events that pursued were nothing short of remarkable. He treated us to a 4 course meal of the most amazing dishes either of us has had in Utah. Cucina Toscana took what could have been a very bad experience and went above and beyond what anyone could have asked. We will definitely be going back!