Tuscan Bistro

I’d give this place one star but the bean and tomato basil soups were delicious. Other than the soups, the service was terrible (and we were two of nine customers) and our app was awful. I ordered a bolognese that was decent and my friend only had a garden salad. Attention Management — if you want to stay open in TC, evaluate your menu and staff ASAP.

Enjoyed the Tagliatelle Bolgnese. Very tasty. Wanted to select a menu item with their house made pasta. Would highly recommend. Penne al Pomodoro was nothing special as it had rather large chunks of stewed tomatoes that detracted from the dish. Liked the place and would certainly come back again.

Ok so we got a hot tip from a friend to check this place out. We like Italian and it was my Moms birthday dinner. Our service from Dania C was not good she was scarce at best. The portion sizes were way off. My mom got the bolognese the small portion and my husband got the large portion different size bowls, but same amount of food. My sister got the large salad with shrimp, in which the shrimp was extra and she got a big bowl with little salad and four shrimp. My daughter got the linguine with clams and she didn’t like it said it tasted funny told the waitress and she offered to box it up so we could take it home. What? Who does that we still paid for a meal she didn’t eat. Wow thank you for the overly priced, no service meal. The waitress had a attitude when she did come to our table.

This is a solid restaurant but it can be summarized by one sentence: For the price you pay you should expect more then what you get here. Food is quite good from the sea food pasta to the spaghetti, to the linguini and clams. The price was I thought a touch on the high side but nothing super unreasonable I would give the food 4 stars.
But the service lacked, immensely.
Never once was my lemonade refilled. Never once… Inexcusable. A food runner brought out our food, which is fine but our server never checked and made sure everything was alright till AFTER our meal. 2 stars for the service.
Hence the 3 star rating. No the solid food does NOT bump it to 3.5 it really is 3 stars for the overall experience.
Maybe we just had a bad experience with one server on an off night? The problem is, I know many other places in TC where I can get 4 star food with consistent 4 star service…
My advice: Maybe give Tuscan Bistro a try, but certainly there is no need to seek it out.

This was recommended by locals and what a great restaurant! Eggplant rollatini was excellent with a fresh tomatoe sauce. Bread with a basil olive oil dipping sauce and the frutti de mara was fantastic! If ever in area we will come back!

If you like mojitos, I recommend the strawberry basil mojito. The bread and pesto sauce you start with is yummy. We asked for more bread to finish off the pesto! The calamari was a little chewy but breaded nicely and tasty. The Penne Al Pomodoro pasta was good but came out really hot. I recommend the half portion of you often find yourself taking pasta home! The half portion was perfect.

We had the unfortunate experience of trying to dine at Tuscan Bistro! We are from TC & our local businesses runs specials to purchase coupons to there establishments. One of them being Tuscan Bistro. A friend & I each purchased a coupon not knowing each other had done so. Only to be told we couldn’t each use them. Only one per table. We had a group of 7 and actually had two tables pushed together. We also showed them the dates purchased which were different and all of us were paying separately! The manager was rude, mater of fact and could care less that we were purchasing 7 meals, salads etc. She said we could use them if ½ of us went to a different table on the other side of the room. Mind you the restaurant was relatively empty. The whole experience was embarrassing and unnecessary, they are the ones who ran the coupon! Customer service was classless, the ambience needs a major makeover. There are so many delicious, classy well run restaurants here in Traverse City that the only thing we are thankful for after this experience is we will NEVER waste our time and money at Tuscan Bistro again.

Raw bar. YUM! Vino selection… Ahhhhhh! Menu… Delish!!! Service… Fantastic! Ambiance… Inviting! Before we even settled our bill I was looking forward to dining here again

Superb food — we had salmon and filet mignon — both excellent. Great service — prompt and friendly — at the busiest time on a Friday night. Tuscan Bistro has ascended to «one of the best places in town» status for me.
Suggestion: since the noise level is so high, printing the nightly specials on a flyer would be preferable to expecting the poor server to scream them over the din. We weren’t able to hear them. I’m sure they’d sell more of the nightly specials if guests knew what they were.

They are trying, but they don’t hit the mark. Bread is average, basil pesto dipping oil might be the best thing on the menu, and that’s not saying much.

We had a «waitress» who encouraged me to try the pasta with broccoli rabe and sausage. What she didn’t mention is that it was drowning in so much garlic and oil that the dish was inedible! She didn’t bother to check on us after our dishes were served either, and the wait staff who removed our plates wasn’t the least concerned that I didn’t like the dish; she just removed it, despite my comments.
When the bill came, I told the waitress about the dish, and she said, «You should have flagged me down. I am busy and I have a lot of tables tonight.» I told her, nicely, that it was not my responsibility to do this, and that neither she nor any of the other wait staff were around. She offered to take the charge off the bill, which was ok – but I didn’t get dinner!
Yep, I got punished for going to this restaurant! Do people in Traverse City tolerate this?

The food was good but the price was very, very expensive because so little was given.

Very good service, wine list is average, quality of the food though is very good. We would come back, spaghetti Bolognese excellent, the french fries with the Panini were outstanding and would recommend a visit

We did come back, and the food was tasty, but EXCRUCIATINGLY slow. It took 1 hr and 16 minutes for our main course to arrive. And 50 min for a bottle of wine, after ordering. Only half our table had their drink orders taken.
The server was very nice, but kept answering questions with a statement that didn’t make any sense. Though they have a GF menu, we were also requesting non-​dairy food, when she kept suggesting items which clearly included dairy/​butter/​cheese/​whipped cream. Very frustrating toward the end.
This was quite (excruciatingly) disappointing, service-​wise, though they were friendly all around. I’d consider returning IF I didn’t have this server; IF I weren’t dying to eat right away; IF I weren’t on a schedule (several of us had long drives later this evening, so this was an issue); IF I didn’t have to request the pasta to be not overcooked.
(It would also probably be a good idea to teach everyone how to pronounce the food items properly, too…)
I had also requested an outdoor table, and upon arriving, was told an indoor table was ready for us. Though this was resolved somewhat quickly, all these things add up to not feeling like a reliable place to bring guests, unfortunately.

Chef special of pork tenderloin with onion and cherry compote and asparagus was wonderful!

This meal was tasty. On the drive over I got to see fog rolling in, that was cool too.
I ordered soup and salad, to keep things affordable and to save room for dessert. If you have no such constraints, you will be just as happy with your food.
I had the small ceasar salad and a bowl of tomato soup, mmm love me some tomato soup. Then, I ordered crème brûlée for dessert. That was fun. Our server was very nice also. I liked the atmosphere too, we sat near a painting that was a scene from the boardman river.
It was a fellow diner’s birthday and they got a free dessert, so if you want a free dessert on your birthday, after a meal, naturally this would be a good place to visit. It was hard to choose for the desserts though, chocolate terrine, crème brûlée or tiramisu? Gosh.

I’m not usually very picky with my food but I really didn’t like it here. Our server was nice but the food was really blah, actually kind of gross. I didn’t even end up finishing my soup or taking it to go as it kind of tasted like canned Progresso soup. My husband’s pasta was also just as blah.
Perhaps if I enjoyed fish and wine I would have liked it better here.

Server was very friendly and helpful. We arrived and had a couple drinks first. Then we moved on to soups/​salads, which were fine, but not remarkable. Our entrees were good. My wife got the «fruit of the sea» which looked and tasted delicious (apparently!). I got the broccoli sausage pasta dish which was very good too. Solid italian. A little pricey for what it is. But it was a nice atmosphere.

We originally had reservations for Trattoria Stella based on the suggestions of my fellow Unilocalers as a place to go to for our Anniversary dinner. That would be my wife and I’s Anniversary not myself and my fellow Unilocalers. Although that would be pretty cool! Anyways after looking over their menu we felt it was just a bit too out there for our tastes.
Sweetbreads, Pig Testa and Offal just aren’t appealing to us and we felt we’d be paying for the ambiance rather then the food. We wanted something nice, but recognizable to our palette so we went to Tuscan Bistro instead. When it was all said and done we made a good decision on the switch.
It was a bit pricey and not a place we’d go to on a regular basis if we lived up that way. It is more of a «fancy occasion» place. The portions for the price were alright. For $ 22 a plate I’d expect a little more then what I got and a Salad to come with it. Instead, if you want a Salad that is extra.
We both got Caesar Salads and the lettuce was still pretty wet and there wasn’t much dressing on it. The dressing that was on it became washed out by the watery lettuce. Not worth the extra $ 5.00 you pay for it. If it had came with the meal I probably wouldn’t be so put off by it.
The service was great and the place only had a few tables sat so we got the full attention of our Server and never had an empty glass. That was a plus. All in all it was for the most part a really nice evening filled with good food (minus the Salads), great wine, even better company and top notch service.

We settled on this Italian restaurant when we couldn’t go to the original Italian place we picked. The original didn’t have any reservations available and could have been at least a two hour wait. However, I called Tuscan and they had didn’t have a wait at all. That’s a good thing right? What also scared me was that we had a two hour wait at one place and this one, no wait at all. I think the other people know something I didn’t
They were right. I would come back here for an entrée or dessert. The appetizer was fine, but I had the Cavatelli for dinner and bread pudding for dessert.
The server warned me that the Cavatelli is a heavier dish, however, not only was it heavier, but it was also very bland. It was extremely weak in flavor, the pasta was extremely dense, and it was very oily as well. Stay away from this dish if you happen to find yourself there.
The bread pudding looks good, it’s better to look at it than to try and eat it. It was not good at all. It was extremely dense and we almost had to use a knife to cut through it. The chocolate sauce around it was overly sweet and I tried to avoid dipping in it or any piece of the bread pudding that was touching the sauce. The table next to us ask if it was any good. I first thought about giving the usual response, good good, not bad, etc… Oh no, he saw me hesitate and start shaking my head back and forth and I told him my thoughts.
Stay away from both of these dish.