Petrella's Italian Cafe

I personally worked here and have witnessed way too much cross contamination. Their tongs they use to handle noodles are the same tongs they have dropped on the ground, which are then picked up and used again without washing. They are the same tongs they use to handle meat related dishes, along with “vegan” dishes as well (if you have eaten a vegan dish, it has touched meat). I have watched Tony and CJ personally “cook” their seafood, and 9 times out of 10, it’s still raw. I’ve seen entire plates of food come back just to be tossed or fed to the employees, who then were stricken with food poisoning (myself included after eating a spaghetti dish). It became so bad that I and 2 other employees had to start going next door to Publix to buy our dinners to keep from throwing up. Even their ice machine has black (not green) mold growing in the back of the inside, and the wall behind it is rotten completely through, leaving a giant gaping hole. I’ve seen countless times where a burger is still raw coming back, spaghetti, lasagna, ziti, zepolli, and everything else under the sun. The only thing I would even THINK of recommending are their salads, simply due to them not being cooked or fried. Even the meatballs are preserved after being cooked each day of business until they are out of the said batch, to the point where the meatball pan and meatball water starts to become green. And PLEASE don’t get me started on the Marsala or manicotti… There have been countless strikes from the Health Department (all recurring warnings dating as far back as 2015), yet nothing has been done about their abhorrent methods and rituals. I am VERY surprised this place is still in business and I will NEVER eat here willingly due to the health risk. I don’t understand what management has going on, but something NEEDS to be done before a stomach bug is the least of their worries… Edit: Oh, and one reason the service and waits are so abhorrently awful is the servers and hostesses like to stand in front of the line and gossip or watch TikTok (sometimes both).

Food portions are ridiculously too large. No one can eat that much food in one sitting. It's very wasteful.

I love Petrella's.

Service and food is always excellent and if ya leave hungry it's your fault...

Best Italian in town

Been to the restaurant and few times and usually never have a problem. But the afternoon I took a client to there for lunch. Soup and salad was wonderful but they ordered the shrimp scampi and I ordered the grouper blackend sandwich. The main course came and I got a fish oder and a fishy taste. And the Shrimp Scampi was fishy smelling and tasting. I guess it was left over from this past weekend. Not really happy. I never like to make a fuse but I just asked for the check and paid the bill. The server should have noticed that the main courses was not eaten. Just sad. And for 50 plus Dollars on the check it was sad.