Francesca’s at The Promenade

The Director of Operations for Francesca’s Restaurant Group contacted me after I sent him a copy of my review from Unilocal.He was very eager to rectify the situation and was more than happy to send my family a gift card so that we can give Francesca’s another go. He also made sure to address the issue at this particular location. I do understand that restaurants have bad days and sometimes patrons are overlooked. Being that my family was grossly overlooked the day we visited, it is much appreciated that someone would take the time to reach out. We have yet to use the gift card we received, but I had to come back and acknowledge the fact that someone cared enough to make sure we were not left with a negative impression of Francesca’s chain. I will be sure to report on out experience at the Naperville location once we visit.

This has become our family’s go to place for special occasions. The atmosphere is warm and inviting. It isn’t too cramped, like the Francesca’s in Naperville — although it can be loud at times, due to high ceilings. The food here is always good, with the exception of the Calamari, which is tough. Today, we had the veal. It was cooked perfectly and the sauce was so good, my husband sopped up every bit! My halibut wasn’t fishy tasting at all — grilled to perfection and finished perfectly. My mother’s Chicken Picatta melted in your mouth. My grandmother is somewhat particular, so she made here own dish — pasta with her choice of veggies and shrimp in a white wine sauce. My father and father-​in-​law had ribeye steak. My father-in-law’s cut like butter and was cooked to perfection. My dad’s was tough — it was a bad cut. One mention to the server and he whisked it away, recommending the veal instead. Within a couple of minutes the manager came over to apologize and the veal was served promptly. Our server Wes is as good as they come — personable, attentive, charming and knowledgeable. We eat out a lot and are a tough group to please, This restaurant gets it right every time.

We went here for our 10 year anniversary.
PROS:
The atmosphere was warm and inviting. The pinot noir (me) and old fashioned (the hubbs) were delicious. Our waitress was spot-​on. The sausage risotto was addicting — I wanted more! She said we could add a protein to it and have as an entrée. I will definitely do that next time instead. The hubbs said the gnocchi was heavy but very delicious. The sauce was tasty like Alfredo. I wish restaurants paired heavy meals with small salads to change the palate in between bites.
CONS:
My chicken with zucchini was annoyingly salty. Four stars for this reason. I could not eat the veggies, and I’m a veggie fanatic. The goat cheese is the only thing that helped me finish the chicken. I think the price did not reflect the quality and presentation of the food. My chicken with zucchini cost $ 19, but it looked and tasted like a $ 15 dinner.
Also, the bathrooms were dirty. As a general former manager myself, I analyze all bathrooms, as I feel they are a direct relationship as to how much detail the management focuses on the establishment. After an hour, the tiny garbage cans were still overflowing with paper on the floor. It is not a patron’s job to remind staff to do theirs. Just sayin’.

The service here is phenomenal, very gracious and attentive. Our waiter, Loren (sp?), had the best dry humor, and the other servers always made sure we had plenty of bread, water etc., We ordered the Sunday special ($ 10 seconds spaghetti & meatballs) & it was pretty tasty. The portion sizes are generous, and they have great cocktails. Also, I’d give the bread basket ⁹⁄₁₀. The only thing I didn’t like was the kalamari appetizer– it was just fried tentacles without much meat or flavor. Overall, it was a good dining experience and I’d eat here again!

The service here was great. We had a very nice waitress here who helped my mom and I navigate the menu on our first visit. I have to take away points for the lack of items on the menu. For such a large restaurant with a good reputation, there wasn’t much to choose from to eat! My mom special ordered a custom penne and I got a burger. (At an Italian place? Yes, I’m that person.) The food was great! Hot, tasty, definitely homemade.
I would recommend this place for a nice dinner out. The prices are not lunch friendly. Their lunch deals are $ 16 per person, and while they include a sizeable amount of food, it’s too costly for lunch. I won’t be back (Italian is not my thing) but my mom sure will!

Went on Valentine’s Day with my wife. The tables are too close together. It felt as though we were sharing our meal with dozens of strangers. We could all clearly hear each other’s conversations. After we were seated the waiter took our drink order.
About 20 minutes later he came back and again asked for our drink order.
While waiting, we had finished the bread and it was never replenished.
Once we were finally able to order our meal, we chose three items from the menu and told the waiter that we would be sharing all thee. The food came out on three separate plates. (No room on the table for empty plates at that point). I once again told the waiter that we were sharing all items and he took the food back and brought us each a plate with a serving of each food type.
The food was fine but the restaurant lacked personnel service and was very cramped

Everything was over sauced and the cooking showed no restraint. The portions were far too big as well. I would rather have gone anywhere but here.

Fancy Italian place with outstanding service! I don’t know that I’ve had service this awesome anywhere in the last 3 – 5 years. Very attentive to details and very accommodating. Only came here for dessert and a drink. Ended up getting a chicken Caesar. Were it not for the great, juicy chicken… The salad would have been trash. The old fashioned that I ordered… Wasn’t even mixed and I didn’t realize it until the bottom of the glass, so I have no clue how it would’ve tasted. My old fashioneds are much better than the non stirred mess I had here. Tiramisu however, was pretty good. I’d find somewhere else to eat even tho I didn’t have an entrée on this first visit.

We had dinner there on Saturday night. We were seated fairly quickly and then waited and waited and waited and waited, until we called a bus boy over to ask if we had a waiter. He said he would get our waiter, who happened to be a woman, and she finally came. She really was not very friendly. We told her we would like to order a drink and then order our food. She was good on letting us sample the wines and then we ordered, finally. THE FOOD WAS SENSATIONAL. I had the Tuna in lemon sauce and it was in credible. Our hats off to the Chef. I will return but never sit in her area again. She had an attitude. I was the Head Concierge at a hotel for 21 years and have had many dinners out in the city, where I live. When the service is not there, it is hard to enjoy the dinner. It was the saving grace for the evening.

A solid four stars! This place has a lot to offer. First it’s a pretty large place so getting a table is not so difficult. Also they have seating at the upper level bar area that’s first come first serve so firebricks four or smaller that’s a good spot… p&l s you can watch TV while eating.
While menu is not the largest they do have offerings in all the categories which is nice as well as daily specials.
Some of my favorite dishes:
Mussels in spicy red sauce
Cucumber and pea pod salad
Chicken dishes are very good as are the typical pasta dishes.
This night I enjoyed homemade fettuccine noodles with lobster and tomatoes and olive oil. The dish was one of my favorite with real lobster claw meat and not the processed stuff!!!
Service is always very good and the price is reasonable.
Great place for a very good meal.
Cheers!

Ehhh… just ehhh. Just something about this place I don’t like. Food is ok, drinks are ok. I have eaten here quite a few times, and yet I’ve never left and felt I wanted to back.

We enjoy their meals here, and we like the size and set-​up of this location. Service is good and friendly. Food always is delicious.

We stopped in for a nice lunch yesterday. The service was phenomenal. The server and staff were very accommodating in helping minimize cross contamination for me with my gluten intolerance. Also, the food was delivered promptly and the water glasses were filled regularly.
Fantastic gluten-​free pizza. I am impressed with the texture and taste of the crust. For dessert we had the GF lava cake and it was moist, flavorful, and the perfect texture. It was topped with mint chocolate chip ice cream and surrounded by fruit. Pure deliciousness!

Food gets two stars, service gets zero stars, averaging out to one star.
The food here is OK; fairly standard fare for any mall italian place. Nothing to write home about, but in general they won’t screw it up. Had fruiti-​di-​mare, and to my surprise the seafood wasn’t overcooked and rubbery! (I didn’t have high hopes going in.) The sauce was pleasant if a bit uninspired. Ordered the carrot cake for desert and was pretty sure it was just unboxed Sysco; completely tasteless except for the frosting.
Where this place falls flat on its face is in the service department. It takes a heck of a lot to break my 15% tipping floor, but this place tunneled through that floor like there was a gold nugget underneath it. We saw our waiter exactly THREE TIMES during the entire meal — once to give us menus, once to take our order, and once to drop off the check. That was it! We had to flag down a busboy to get drinks, had to flag down a different busboy to get bread, flag down another busboy to get water, you get the idea. Eventually tipped 1% on a $ 100 check and wrote YOU SUCK in large letters next to the tip line.
Even worse, management doesn’t care. Typically if you’re in a restaurant the GM will at least swing by and check if everything is going OK, not at Francesca’s! Oh he was at the restaurant — large fellow wearing a denim shirt making laps between the kitchen and the bathroom and more or less continuously keeping an eye on the house from the kitchen entrance — but never did he deign to interact with the customers. Fittingly, once our meal was over he apparently fell in a hole; we asked for the GM to complain about the atrocious service and nobody could find him! After a few minutes we just left; if the restaurant doesn’t care to hear about their atrocious service then I won’t bother sticking around twenty minutes to complain. I’ll vote with my wallet and eat ANYWHERE else.

For the dinning experience, I still loved this place. Dishes are great and services were decent.
However, I was a bit unhappy that we didn’t get to stay in the party room which I didn’t really understand the reason. I made a reservation for the party room for 10 of us a week ago. A lady took my reservation and happily told me I was all set and there is no minimal expense required.
4 hours before my reservation time, I got a call from the restaurant and asked me to call back to confirm my reservation which I did right away. I called back and was told Party room is not available and we are moved to a separate area which I thought it is a separate room. I told him we have 10 ladies who could be very loud when we are excited to see each other. He said no worries.
A couple of my girlfriends got there before me. We were moved to a big table next to a few small tables. After we sat down, they told me they heard from the host that we were booted from the party room because we didn’t pay the minimal deposit for the party room. I would be happy to pay the fee if there was someone told me when I called. I felt like someone lied to me. It is OK to ask us to move to a table if there is someone really needed the party room. I’d understand. But if you told me there is NO minimum expense needed when I make the reservation, you’d better to stick to your word. Not give the party room out to someone who made the reservation after me. This is not right.
I didn’t want to ruin the night for the girls who have not seen each other for a few months. We still chatted and enjoyed dinner. Both Tilapia and Halibut fish were delicious. Pastas were a little bit off. Our server was awesome. For desert, we tried Tiramisu, Crème Brulee, German Chocolate cake for dessert. Tiramisu was right on the spot. Other two are just OK.
I’m not sure if I will come back here. Decided to write to the restaurant to see how they respond.

Second time dining at Promenade. Not impressed at all. The calamari tasted like it had been cooked, left sitting out and set under a heat lamp. My pasta dish was beyond al dente and the sausage tasted pre-​cooked, kind of dried out. My husbands grouper was decent, but nothing to rave about.
The bus boys were lapping the table and kept grabbing stuff off the table that was bring used or eaten. Who takes your knife off the table mid-​way through the meal? And what’s the deal with being asked if you want your food boxed while you’re eating it! People are out to a nice dinner to relax – and enjoy their meal, stop rushing your patrons.
Underwhelmed and won’t be dining here again. Doesn’t compare at all to Capri in DG.

The girlfriend and I decided to go for Italian last night (Sunday Night) and we have heard very good reviews about here. But as this is the first time going here, the issues we ran into may have been a one time thing. I most likely will give it one more shot in the future.
First off, the restaurant is extremely clean and well maintained. Staff was extremely friendly. However, our waiter did forget about our appetizer (the Bruschetta con Prosciutto, which was ok. Big pieces of bread with a few tomatoes and a small piece of prosciutto). And they ended up bringing it out with our dinner, which was a tad odd, but they did take it off the bill so I can’t complain too much there.
And I ordered the $ 24 (forgot the name) jumbo shrimp with spicy tomato sauce (not spicy) on linguini. It also had black olives and capers (a few to many in my opinion but it did add a nice flavor). It was an alright meal. I wasn’t impressed with it and won’t order it again for $ 24. Maybe for 18 – 20 dollars I would.
The only other thing that was a little odd was that 90s Rock was playing on the radio. I would think something a tad more Italian themed would be better.
But it was an average restaurant. Very clean, well maintained, very nice staff, food was ok but a very good drink selection!
I will try it again at some point in the future hopefully with better results!

Being a fan of most of the other Francesca restaurants, this one was the worst by far. We had a party of 10 And no one left happy with either the service or food. The servers were clueless as to who ordered what … Everyone had to study their dish to make sure it was the right one.
I had the seafood pasta and it was OK except for the shrimp had a fishy taste. The other person who had the same dish said theirs was not spicy. The chicken dish promised pine nuts but none could be found .
The bus boy was clumsy and unapologetic as he dropped his knife on the lap of one of the diners.
The room we were in was by the windows and cold… just plain bad … None of us will be returning.

It is difficult to review a restaurant based only on one dining experience. So, take this review with a grain of salt. Nonetheless, here it is.
The restaurant gets big bonus stars for having a very large and nicely presented gluten-​free menu. And they had that holy grail of items: the gluten-​free pizza!
BUT…
I ordered one with sausage, artichoke, eggplant, and black olives. As shown in the pictures below, upon arrival there was very little in the way of sausage toppings. As a matter of fact, there were only seven pieces of sausage for the eight slices of pizza! One slice would have to be naked.
Also, it really wasn’t very warm. I described it as the temperature of a cracker that had sat in a beam of sunshine.
However, as any good user of Unilocal knows, let the restaurant try to fix any problems!
In this instance, the waitress gladly retrieved the pizza to warm it up. And she had the kitchen put a substantial quantity of sausage on the pizza. Please refer to the before and after pictures with this review. The before picture is the way this restaurant served the pizza, which is with very little topping. And the after picture is in my view the correct way the pizza should’ve been served from the start– with lots of topping. so, while your mileage may vary, my experience was the originally served version of the pizza was laughably free of the toppings, but the corrected version was, well, corrected in terms of sausage. The temperature at the pizza was better, but still far from steaming.
I might give it a second chance, and try something else off their gluten-​free menu, and while I’m there see if other pizzas look topped.

I have eaten at nearly every Francesca’s and they are truly one of the most consistently great restaurants around. This location at Bolingbrook promenade is very nice indeed. This Store is large and modern and many people shop in the afternoon then settle down for a great Italian meal here.
Service is alway a excellent. Menu changes daily but they stay with what they do best. Appetizers to pizzas, salads to pastas I’ve yet to have a truly bad experience at any of their locations. The attention to detail shows in every aspect of the experience.
What we ate:
Sautéed calamari — A
Cheese filled tortellini in a vodka cream sauce — A. (Simple but well executed)
Scallop and roasted artichoke heart — A–
Cooked perfectly but the combo wasn’t perfect together.
You cannot go wrong with a Francesca’s!