Bosco's Italian Cafe - Mandeville

Two old School ways to tell if a Italian restaurant is really good. Try one of their meatballs with red sauce and a slice of cheese Pizza. If they impress you then you know you won't be let down.

If your searching for real Italian food, served in a atmosphere where you feel like a welcome member of the family...because once you come here to eat, you are family.

I love Bosco's restaurant and am a regular customer but I can't say the same for their pizza. I ordered a small cheese and it tasted like a frozen pizza you'd get at Rouse's. Extremely disappointing. Dominoes is better and that's a very low bar. The Italian salad was delicious though.

Pizza was delicious! Can’t say I like using the slice app though.

What a disappointment!! Bosco's was once one of my favorite restaurants for many years. We hadn't been there since Covid, so I was excited to return. We won't go back again. Let me start with the most important things first. I am sympathetic to restaurants trying to survive Covid, but the prices now are nothing short of ridiculous. I could live with that, but that's not why I will never return. After spending $20 for meatballs and spaghetti (the highest I have seen anywhere ever), I asked for just a little more tomato sauce and was charged an ADDITIONAL $3 for a VERY small amount. A meatballs and spaghetti dinner ended up costing right under $25 PLUS TAX AND TIP, and no it was not as good as I had remembered. The menu stated that we had a choice of house or Ceasar salads included with the meals, so we chose Ceasar salads. There was an upcharge of $3.00 for the Ceasars on the bill. For what?? The salad size was very small, and there was almost no cheese or dressing on them. The cheese didn't seem freshly grated, which you would expect with food in this price range. It was the kind you buy in bulk already grated. The eggplant casserole was almost $29 after an upcharge for a Ceasar salad. My boyfriend and I had meatballs and spaghetti, eggplant casserole, two (small) glasses of house wine, and a Diet Coke, and the bill was right under $100 including the tip. The extra charges put me over the edge. If you're going to charge $20 for two meatballs with pasta, you can afford to provide an extra spoonful of sauce if requested. This didn't apply to us, but there is an $8 charge to split a veal dinner and a $6 charge to split any other dinner. If you use a credit card it's an additional 4%, and instead of just stating that, they put a placard on the table stating that the extra charge allows a 3rd party provider to provide necessary fraud protection, or something to that effect. Why not just be honest and say that, not only do you not want to cover the 2% fees that credit card companies typically charge, but you'd like to make an extra 1% or 2% on that too? Or maybe you really, really want to incentivize cash sales? Finally, after paying almost a Ruth's Chris price for an Olive Garden meal, we were served bread knots (that were not very good) stuffed in an empty CAN that tomatoes came in, along with butter in those TINY, individual (tear open) plastic cups. Are you kidding me? What happened to the BEST hot french bread served with butter on a plate? BTW, we were not offered bread. We sat for quite a while and then had to ask for it. The only positive things I can say is that the server was very friendly, and we weren't charged anything to rent the knives and forks. Sadly, we will not go back. They got us good on some extra charges for nothing this time, above and beyond already high prices, but they lost two loyal customers. I hate to use this word again, but this was nothing short of ridiculous. DiMartino's beats this place HANDS DOWN for menu variety and value, and their food quality is just as good. They raised their prices due to Covid too, but at least I don't feel violated when I leave. I haven't felt this way since paying $60 for four warm draft beers in the Superdome. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.