They Are Ruining the Place

One of my families favorite places to eat for the past 10 years has been La Roma's Pizza in Abingdon. For my Bethalto's peeps, La Roma's is as close to Roma's as you can get. The two families are in fact related and the recipe is almost (but not quite) the same. Every couple of years that owner returns to Italy for awhile and has someone else run the place while he is gone. A few years ago his replacement's were Gianni and Caterina who became very good friends and attended our church. When the owners returned from Italy, Gianni relocated his family to Hillsboro where he opened Gianni's Pizza and Ristorante, right off the square. If you are ever in Hillsboro, do yourself a favor and go visit them. Fantastic food and great people.  Anyway... the owners are gone again right now, and I am hoping this is a short stay away. The place is going downhill rapidly in their absence. The food is inconsistent and the service... well, let's just say that there IS NO SERVICE there right now. The guy running the place is letting the teenagers there run rampant. We were there last night and took some friends with us who had never been there before. One of them commented that she liked the pizza but would not return until the owners were back if this was how service was. The girl who took our order was so busy hanging with her friends that she never came back to check on us a single time. Only when my wife got up to get refills on our drinks herself did another girl come out to check on us. (By the way, all these teens are hanging out in the kitchen area, which is a bit unsettling to me. Last night there were at least 10 kids goofing off back there.) This was not a one time event. We went last week and it was pretty much the same. Our waitress took our order and then a group of friends came in and they all sat down to eat together and were acting like fools screaming and carrying on. I know kids will be kids, but 2 of these were SUPPOSED to be working. Not once did anyone check on us, we got our own drinks, got our own box to take the leftovers in and never did she or anyone else speak to us. And the language coming from that table was  loud, crude and vulgar. One of the boys that had come in actually told our waitress that she needed to tone it down because she was dropping so many "F-bombs" that people were staring at her. She just laughed. I love La Roma's, but I think I've gone for my last pizza until the owners return. At the rate things are going, he may not have a place to return to!