liliana's restaurant

i went to liliana's with a group of business associates and found that, in my opinion, this restaurant has gone down hill drastically in both food quality and customer service. the menu has changed and they now only offer "small plates". it is now necessary to order 3-4 plated to make a full sized meal. the prices have gone down 30% and the serving sizes has gone down by 50%. the food is not even close to the quality it was at my last visit (over a year ago) i found the service to be very slow even with the place only being 25% full. i ordered the jambalaya that was almost room temperature. when i told the wait staff this their reply was " this is the way it is served" i then tried the chicken and cheddar grits that arrived under cooked ! so i left it uneaten. i finished with the beignets that were fine but 60% of the serving size that were served in the past. after getting home i felt ill and believe it was because of the food served at lilianas. the next day i contacted the madison health department and found that they have given liliana's a verybadhealth score (see yelp health score rating of 49). please contact the health department yourself for more information. i do not know what made this place get sobad(new ownership) ?? i will never step foot in this restaurant again and would advise everyone to do your research before eating any food here.

just say no to the food, but go hear the jazz tuesday nights. god... really? wi cajun... just say no.badservice. food was cold and unappetizing. the two young girls got their main courses before us, although we were there and placed our orders long before them. salmon overcooked and cold. how nice! worst $100. spent ever. just say no to the food. the jazz was great and the drinks, well- they were drinks...lol

trying hard . . .. the owner is trying hard to build up a steady business. the food is simply okay, with some hits like the crab cakes and some misses like the jambalaya. the service we experience was prettybadwith one of our party actually having to chase down our waitress several times. the crowd was thinner than usual on this saturday night, so our waitress should have been on top of things. she appeared to be more interested in talking to her co-workers and folding napkins than in attending to our needs. we were also seated at a table with a lovely view of the dirty dishes. i could see being seated there if the place was busy, but not when there were so many tables available. we did enjoy the bar staff and the jazz. i hope the owner makes some changes to the service area as the food is okay and different for the madison area. we will come back when we're in the mood for this type of food, but it will not be a favorite until the service is improved.

good newsbadnews the food is great. 350 great wines. but service was awful. maybe they do take out? tomato bisque was very good. jambalaya was excellent. had very nice cabernet. now service hadreservation for seven. arrived at arranged time but table had not been set up. took half hour before we were led to table. server appeared mentioned specials brought water and disappeared for 20 minutes. came back. took drink orders. another 10 minutes to bring bottle of wine. took food orders. was another 30 minutes before food arrived. waiter did not come back. had to flag him down to bring bread. we were getting tipsy from the booze with no food. food came. still waiter did not check back. had to flag down for 2nd bottle of wine. the restaurant was full but appeared to have lots of servers available. i could understand a busy kitchen. if server had been attentive and explained the problem and kept use happy with bread and drinks, i'd felt differently. so, if you visit, bring a book and snacks, while you wait for dinner.

steer clear of shellfish. we had 2 good dinners here which led us to come in for our anniversary and it was a disaster. my wife was half way through her dinner and found an unopened mussel. after telling the waitress she came back from the chef and told us that the chef said it happens all the time and its fine and safe to eat. no thank you. we sent it away.
i have 2 problems with this: first there were 3-4 mussels in the dish. it should be easy to make sure they were all cooked. second, i'm really not convinced that it is safe to eat unopened mussels. the fda says no and as a person with a phd in chemistry i agree.
just to top off ourbadexperience they charged us for a bottle of wine we didn't order.
bottom line: certain things are good here, service has been either really good or really bad, and i would never eat any shellfish from a place that thinks serving closed mussels is ok.