liliana's restaurant

many regulars at liliana's probably recognize my face, for i was the lead bartender for almost a year. dave fired me on the spot three weeks ago when i started to complain about his corrupt business practices.

what am i talking about? well, lucky for you i'm a writer by trade: dave sleeps with his employees and turns a blind eye to significant drug exchanges that takeplaceunder his eyes. he also encourages his underage servers to drink and sample wine, even though he has no bartenders with liquor licenses. his lead server, bryan, consistently hits on underage girls and abuses his coworkers by stealing their tables and lying about it. to give you an idea of how insidious these practices are: bryan arrives before the rest of the servers and manipulates the reservation system by putting "requested bryan" under the reservation tab, even if bryan has never served the table before.

all of this would be of less concern to me if not for the fact that my father (who has parkinson's) and i have struggled to make ends meet the past few weeks. when dave fired me, he also took away my weekly paychecks, and i won't receive any positive income for some time. he also has denied my unemployment claim on the grounds that i wasn't fired (so which is it? was i fired or not?

so, i beg you, in a time of covid19: don't patronize liliana's, and if you liked me as your bartender, perhaps you should ask dave if he has a heart and should compensate me for the two weeks i lost pay because i decided to stand up for myself for a change. dave's response? he called the cops on me and worked to get my hospitalized, claiming that i was making all this up. don't allow local business owners to abuse their employees -- life is hard enough as it is when you work in the service industry.

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 theplaceonly 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 very bad health score (see yelp health score rating of 49). please contact the health department yourself for more information. i do not know what made thisplaceget so bad (new ownership) ?? i will never step foot in this restaurant again and would advise everyone to do your research before eating any food here.

great. neatplacegreat foid

a favorite. we can't wait to come back. theplaceis owned by a real chef, so the menu is constantly changing and very imaginative. dave heide is obviously constantly thinking about the food. that by itself is a good reason to come back. be sure to check out the cocktail specials! i see in an article in madison magazine that chef dave is from wisconsin (before studying at le cordon bleu and cooking in california for several years). that's the only reason we have somebody like him here in fitchburg. we just plain lucked out on that one.

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 pretty bad with 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 theplacewas 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.

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 our bad experience 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 aplacethat thinks serving closed mussels is ok.

great food, wonderful atmosphere, excellent wait staff, best crab cakes! an upscale cajunplacethat is not too expensive. a nice addition to madison's already good restaurant scene.

good experience. unlike the other two reviewers i had a good experience. the restaurant seemed fairly new (i went there the first week of august) so it is quite possible they have been working out the kinks. i ordered the creole trio, my father a noodle dish with chicken, andouille, shrimp and vegetables, and my mother a noodle dish with a smoked pork shoulder. all the food was great and had generous portions of meat/ingredients (even the noodle dishes). i've been to new orleans quite a bit (used to live in texas so it was only a 5 hour drive) and thisplacebrought back lots of good memories.

their cornbread/biscuits are also quite good and there doesn't seem to be much of a need to order an appetizer making it a fairly reasonably priced place.