Bella Fresco Cafe

I went to lunch on a Thursday afternoon at 12 p.m. Bella Fresco is tucked in the Carillon Building — you really have to go looking for it, I don’t think anyone would just willy-​nilly find this place. Which may explain why it was nearly empty. There were a few people a take-​out area — which would be super convenient, if I worked in that building. A server saw us standing awkwardly (and alone) in the front area and took us upstairs to be seated. There were 2 other tables in an otherwise empty restaurant. Not a big deal, but not a great sign.
Our server greeted us immediately and was very friendly. My table ordered a couple of wraps with fries and a salad with salmon. First, the fries — they were cooked perfectly. Nice crispy outside — very tasty. The wraps were also reportedly very good. I ordered the fattoush salad with medium rare salmon. The salmon was cooked exactly how I ordered. There was a very salty seasoning on it that I didn’t love, but it was okay. If I were to do it over again, I would request no seasoning. The salad was quite fresh and crisp, but the dressing was very bland — order a dressing you’ll like on the side.
The atmosphere was clean and sleek — but with almost no one there is just seemed a little weird. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. It was truly A-​OK.

Bella Fresco was amazing!!! Beautiful restaraunt, amazing service!!! It was such a great experience! Wine was great, the appetizer was delicious– we got the blooming onion and then I ordered a craft burger, the mamasita! Then for dessert, we ordered gelato! This place offered a great vibe, with awesome music and service, and most importantly, the food is so fresh and yummy! Definitely visit this place sometime!

Very good place despite the other bad reviews. Food tastes great and is flavorful. Staff is also very friendly. Great and quite place for lunch. Tapas are very good.

My boyfriend and I came by for dinner and drinks after work one day. We sat at the bar and had a great time! The staff was very nice and upfront about it being a fairly new business. Great food and atmosphere! We ordered a few tapas (chicken tiki masala & falafels) and had sangria (Wednesday’s it’s $ 5!).

I’m new to this area! Yummm!!! Cute lil café type of establishment w/​a bar and menu of tapas, entrees & GELATO! Definitely casual, good for a chill quick bite to eat or sweet tooth stop. People very nice and they have tvs!
Samoa Gelato — yumm! Chicken Tika Marsala — yumm!

I stop by brought my date here for dinner. They were opened, the doors where wide open, we walked straight in. However, nobody was there? No HOST, no WAITERS, No WAITRESS, No WORKERS, there was NOBODY!!! Ruined MY DATE I had to leave & go somewhere else. Made me LOOK BAD!!! Don’t ever Go Here. No one is even working in the front are OPEN? Unprofessional, Disgusting, & Embarrassing. NEVER AGAIN!
This was exactly on March 16, 2016 the date was set for 8:30pm. This really one of the biggest disappointment I’ve had on a date. I eat at the Bella Fresco at the Arboretum Plaza all the time since I live in South Charlotte. Yet, I choose this location because it was neutral and closer for my date. Big mistake, these two companies are night and day probably different owners. I had confidence since I been to the other location I recommended to my date that we eat there. When I got there I was embarrassed no one was there no host, no waiter, no waitress, nobody. My date was freaking out like where are we? What kinda of place is this? Are they open? What is this? I was so frustrated I had calm her down and let her know I had another place we could eat. I understand that you might not be as busy as the other location. However if you are not busy shorten the hours & don’t open everyday of the week. You are making your company look even worse by being open and having no customers or workers. Offer free appetizers, free drinks, online ads or something to generate business. That’s the worse thing a company can do is be open and have no one in the front when guest walking to greet them. This is a very critical part of every business to have people to greet customers as they walk in. If no one is there they will walk out. If can not afford to have workers in the front greeting people. Then shorten the hours or be closed that day. This is better than leaving a bad representation of the company like this. I recommend shortening the days open to Wed — Sat, actually hiring some people to work here, doing online Marketing, free appetizers, flyers to local businesses, to help generate more business. This saddens me how bad this location is considering how good the Arboretum location is but they are 2 totally different companies I see now. I hope this helps however I had probably the worse experience I believe I ever had coming to a restaurant for a date.

We came here Saturday night for dinner ahead of the Boys II Men concert. It was girls night out and there were 7 of us. Considering the chaos uptown with the St. Patty’s day bar crawl, it was a nice retreat to not have those crowds in this place. The food was delicious and the prices were reasonable. A few girls got the flatbreads, a few got entrees (lasagna, mediterranean chicken, mushroom risotto), and a few girls got tappas. Everyone was extremely pleased with the food. The downside to this place was the bar service. Drinks took FOREVER. The quickest delivery was for a glass of wine that one of the girls ordered. Even beer took a long time to be delivered, but goodness the mixed drinks pretty much arrived with our meals. I still gave this place 4 stars because the food was seriously that good, but I hope they can get it together with the bar.

While I was walking to my office yesterday, someone handed me a card for this place. I put it in my pocket and forgot about it, but my co-​worker got a lamb burger for lunch and it looked and smelled great, so I decided to give it a try myself and I’m glad I did. The meat was perfectly cooked and juicy and tasted great, the goat cheese went really well with both the meat and the bacon-​onion jam. The only thing I would do differently is ask for them to go light on the bacon-​onion jam the next time, as it was a little too sweet for my taste. Anyways, it was so good that another of my co-​workers ended up getting a lamb burger.
Then, today, two of my co-​workers and I called in a lunch order. One of my colleagues who lives near the Arboretum location recommended the steak sandwich, so I got it. It was good also, although I preferred the lamb burger.
That said, the service was a little disorganized so I can definitely believe the negative reviews on here. My colleague who ordered a lamb burger today got a pickle with his, although I did not yesterday. He also got sweet potato fries instead of the herb-​roasted potatoes that he ordered. All the lamb burgers that were ordered arrived in different packages. It wasn’t a big deal for any of us and we all agreed that we’d be willing to go back and at full price (we’d gotten a 30% discount that’s good through the rest of February), but I could see how it might have led to a long wait or terrible experience for a table-​service meal.
I’m starting a new job next week so I won’t be back for lunch, but hopefully they’ll fix the inconsistency/​disorganized service. If they do, I’d be happy to give them a try for dinner, and if they open a location near South Park, I’d definitely give them a try for lunch

My friend and I accidentally found this place, and I’m glad we did! I think some of the reviews are a bit ridiculous. sure service wasn’t perfect but it’s a new place. The food alone should give this place 5 stars. I highly highly recommend the lambs burger. The flavors will blow you away! I hope that service gets into a smooth rhythm because I’m ready to go back and try their tapas.

The space this restaurant is in couldn’t be better. Great location and great vibe. It’s clear that a lot went into the construction of this place. From the start, after being sat, the service was poor. The waitress didn’t know what varietals of wine were available and wasn’t able to answer questions about them once we had the menu. Not a huge deal but we went to spend money on quality food and drinks so it would have been nice to have had some help on things we had never tried. Moving forward it became clear by the flow of things that the servers weren’t trained on the menu or the basic progression of a meal. That or they were poorly trained. The food was amazing. I had the salmon and it was cooked to perfection. The worst part of the meal was at the end when it was time for checks. It took the staff an hour to get things right. So after a 2 hour meal we waited another hour for checks. Within that hour were a couple of attempts at delivering the checks but there were issues on them that had everyone at our table paying too much and after that experience we were unwilling to bite the bullet for more of their mistakes. It looks and tastes great but functionally poor. I’ll likely not be spending any more money there.
There was a manager that did everything he could to help. He even had us laughing at times during the chaos. We think his name was Al. He told us his name but I can’t remember it. He was great.

Went here during Charlotte Restaurant Week — braving the ice storm and Charlotte’s inability to plow/​salt/​slag/​brine roads. Immediately greeted and seated in the upper area of the restaurant. Nice décor. You could tell that they were working out staffing quirks but we had two awesome servers who were professional and personable. I had the prix fix menu with the pomegranate lamb, Pollo alla cacciatora and tiramisu. My dining partner had the Chicken Tikka Masala, Salmon and tiramisu. No complaints on the food except possibly the lamb (only due to there being no essence of pomegranate anywhere). All were cooked to order, very flavorful and well plated. The portions were significantly larger than expected for a upscale dining venue in uptown.

I have been here twice. The first time my I went there my sweet potato fires were burnt and very hard. Thought I would give it a second try. This time I ordered a salad. I was very disappointed in the size of the salad given the price (I was also given the wrong dressing). It was about the size of a side salad and was almost $ 10. Food is way overpriced for what you get. Not impressed.

I don’t get all the bad reviews. We came on a Friday night. The food was really good. We had a variety of dishes, flat bread, pasta, lamb & salmon — all delicious!
I’ve read the service is bad, but our sever was attentive. He did bother us, but was sure to check in on us regularly. The 4 tables around us seemed satisfied as well.
I think everyone should give this place a try. The Pepino Fresco cocktail and Blueberry crumble dessert OMG!!!

Short version: Food was stellar, service was atrocious.
My group was quickly and easily sat in the private dining area as we had made reservations for Saturday night. Our group goes out quite frequently tog This was excellent and our group was happy to sit and start a round of cocktails.
Our orders were quickly taken and waters were brought for everyone. Then things started to go downhill.
Cocktails took quite awhile to come to the table — we were fine with this. However, when they did arrive the waiters were wrong about which cocktail was what. Our group solved the problem by tasting and determining which ones matched the menu descriptions. I could understand if you did not remember who ordered which drink but please, at least know the name of the drink you are serving.
Ordering was quick and simple, some opted to do the restaurant week special while others simply picked an appetizer and an entrée. We specifically asked if it was easier for us to all order at once, and was told it was.
The first food to come out was an appetizer and an entrée for the same person! It was confusing and disappointing as they were unable to enjoy their food without it getting cold.
Then about 5 minutes later everyone’s appetizers came out and chaos ensued. The problem was the waiters did not know what food they were bringing out. No one had moved seats but they did not seem to know what food belonged to each seat either. Many dishes got mixed up and some extras that we had not ordered were some how also brought. The same problem occurred with the entrees.
The food was superb! Everyone really enjoyed every dish and the food was cooked to perfection. In particular I was incredibly impressed with the burger, and the salmon.
Since less of us had ordered dessert it was a little easier to get the dishes correct.
At this point we were more than ready to leave after a 2 hour dining experience. So we simply asked for our checks. It took 1.5 hours to get our checks. We offered to all line up at the register downstairs and go through our order and all pay just so we could leave. However, we were just simply held captive and frustrated.
This ruined our entire dining experience. I’m beyond disappointed that I won’t get to try more of the fantastic cocktails and dishes on the menu. I wouldn’t even return with just my partner.
The majority of my group including myself have worked in the service industry and understand large groups can be complicated. We are easily understanding on a few mishaps or general slowness due to our size, however their were too many mistakes and too much confusion and our experience was completely ruined.

I usually don’t write reviews but something has to change for this restaurant. I went in last week around 12:45 to order a panini, something that you wouldnt think would take very long to make and a side of fries ($ 1.50 extra). I sat and waited an hour while everyone else in front of me got their food and walked out. When I finally got my food by the time my lunch hour was over, I was not given the fries that I paid extra for. The panini itself was decent. The management I could see felt bad and wrote me a card for one free lunch item. I went back down today to use my gift card for a free lunch Item hoping for a better experience only to get a cold plate of fries and a cold wrap and my side of ceasar dressing? was incredibly seperated and nasty. I TRULY want this restaurant to do well but you would think after a horrible experience and knowing I was comped a meal, that they would at least give me fresh food.