Il Fornaio - Del Mar

We had a reservation but waited 10 minutes past our time. Then she walked us to a perfectly good table, then back to the hostess stand, then back to another table. Not sure why, no explanation offered. We should have expected the service to be so bad when we sat for 20 minutes without meeting our server. She took our drink order. Then as we waited 50 minutes for pasta, she never once thought to ask if we want another drink to fill both long empty glasses. The service was terrible enough where we won’t be back.

I was quite disappointed about the food. Quality was very low and very expensive!!
At the time of the reservation , I mentioned we were going to celebrate a birthday: ; when we reached the restaurants we were properly greeted but then they asked if we wanted to celebrate....we said yes and at the end of the meal, they completely forgot we were there to celebrate the birthday.
Not a good experience

Great location in Del Mar. The best bolognese sauce I can remember. Service is outstanding as well.

Wonderful food, good wine list excellent views. We will be back. We live in Encinitas.

Service was excellent. We had a very personable server. My food was perfect. My husband’s was good but not great. Overall we had a really nice time and plan to return. Our son enjoyed his pasta.

As usual, I’ll Fornaio in Del Mar didn’t disappoint. We took advantage of the New Years Eve special dinner menu. The fixed price options offered my entire family the options they were looking for. The food was prepared perfectly and served piping hot. The wine options were varied and excellent. The service was impeccable. The wait staff was extremely attentive without being overbearing. We look forward to our next dining experience there.

Wonderful, friendly service and amazing food. We will definitely be back!

My family truly enjoyed the experience. Food and service were both great.

Slow service getting first drinks - waiter very friendly but maybe too friendly. Christmas Eve so everyone was probably a little frazzled

christmas eve dinner

Pre-Christmas dinner with family.

Business Christmas party

Always great food and vibes. Our Waiter Diego was a charm..

Place was little noisier than our previous visits.
Waitress was distracted and was in hurry.
Veg dish was mediocre and my Salmon was just ok.

It was a great restaurant and the food was very good. We really enjoyed the deserts also.

Great as always!

We were a party of 6 on Thanksgiving. The menu for the day included traditional Thanksgiving meals. We had pizza, roast turkey and pasta. The food was all very good and the service was too. Ocean view table. We have been to Il Fornaio before several times and expect good food and service and we were not disappointed. New Thanksgiving tradition for our family!!

We ordered the shrimp & lobster risotto, it was too salty. Then the bisteca instead of medium well we had it rare. I ‘ve come to this restaurant many times, but this one they got it all wrong. We like the bread and wine though.

Our waiter was very attentive and lovely dinner experience! Have been going here for years always delivers the best food and service (:

While the service was outstanding, the food is sub-par. A few points to be noted-
The bread was very dry and lifeless. While the olive oil was good, the balsamic vinegar was horrible. We had the truffle topped Salmon. While the salmon was ok, the truffles had absolutely no flavor or smell. This is totally deceptive as the advertisement I received via email (and the reason we came in) marketed it
as freshly shaven, not drenched with sauce. They looked more like canned truffles. Lastly, I would say that the pasta bolognese had little flavor. Compared to Cucina Enoteca or North Italia, it was just basic. Reminded me of Old Spaghetti factory. I rarely write reviews, but this needed to be said. For such a great location and great service, the Chef needs to either redo the menu or be replaced.

The food is just terrible. The $27.50 chicken dish is was served luke warm and it was no different than a grocery store rotisserie. Matter of fact the other person in our party who ordered it said the same. The pasta was so salty and $19 portion tiny. Two of my guests did not even eat their dishes. Honestly, I did not expect “amazing” food from a chain but it was terrible. Service was non-existent. Fried calamari was just siting in grease, hardly any coating. Seasonal vegetables was a serving of wet spinach. One of my guests vegetables looked and tasted exactly like the frozen “Normandy Blend” from Costco. Please don’t waste your money here - you work way too hard to just throw it away.

Our server Irene D (42663) was fantastic! My guest and I wanted to do a food and wine pairing with a side-by-side comparison of two 2016 Pinot Noirs, one from the Russian River and the other from the Willamette Valley. Our server Irene D made recommendations from the regional menu that accentuated both the flavors of our food and wines. She turned what we had hoped would be a nice dinner into a phenomenal dining experience! Cheers to Vittorio and his team at Il Fornaio Del Mar!

Have always enjoyed ail Fornaio. This time, they appeared to be under-staffed. Our waitress was very good—but service was very slow, because she had several other tables to cover.

Salads were great. Pizza looked good but the other meals weren’t served hot. I’ve had better meals here before. Wonderful setting of course

This is my first choice of restaurant for a celebration (birthday) or treating friends to a special meal. The food is consistently tasty, fresh and imaginative. The choices are across-the-board excellent. The service was very attentive without going overboard. I expect to return here often in the future. The view of the ocean is another attraction for me.

The outside dining area is beautiful, but it was so loud! We sat inside and had a great dinner and could hear each other.

Great place with great food and views . Service was outstanding . Been to other restaurants in the chain and this is one of the best

Great! In every aspect.

Excellent service and food!

The food is reliably very good here. The seafood is nice and fresh. The pasta is terrific. Salads are nice. Drinks are very good. Every time I go to this restaurant, I wonder why I don't go there more often. I always walk out happy, never disappointed.

Service was slow as they were ending the Sunday rush for Restaurant Week. It took awhile for the server to get to us even for our water!

I loved Il Fornaio when it had it's original Festa Regionale and stopped going when they made those significant changes in that program without any prior communication. But since it was restaurant week, we decided to give it a try and I was disappointed with my pasta and seafood entree. Basically it was tasteless!

Food subpar. Service was great and we had a wonderful bottle of wine.

Fun for date night! Try the patio!

We had a party of 12 that took advantage of then San Diego Restaurant Week $20 lunch menu. Everyone enjoyed their food, the location on the outdoors patio and the views from there. My only complaint would be the excessive price for alcoholic drinks - for example $10 for a 6 oz glass of wine!
But overall it was a very pleasant experience!

The staff was very nice, but the service was terrible. The food was okay, but not outstanding. We spent two and half hours just for lunch. The man at the next table refused to pay for his dessert because it came so late that he was already finished and just wanted to get out. We ate on the patio, but there was a loud party at the next table, which made it difficult to enjoy a nice conversation or our lunch. The restaurant did not seem that busy, so the delays seemed unjustified. We went for lunch instead of dinner to avoid the traffic, but ended up in the rush hour. A bad day all round.

We came in for a restaurant week lunch and were impressed by the generous deal. We were seated at a window table on the patio so had a great view although sadly it was a cloudy day so not at its best. We each had a different appetizer, bruchetta, carpaccio and caprese all nice portions. For second course 2 of the party had a chicken sandwich and one had a pizza which was diner plate size and we took half of it home. For dessert we all chose a gelato option because we were all full but there was still room for something sweet. All that for $20 per head. Well done Il Fornaio.

Our table location and view of the ocean was excellent. Concierge was friendly and held our table since we got delayed in arriving at the restaurant. Food was excellent and our waiter was attentive to our needs .

The spectacular view and ambiance feels like being in the Meditteranean. The warm homemade bread is excellent and the rest of the meal was just as delicious. We were able to see the sunset from our table which added to the beauty of the evening.

Love this place!