Review of Mangia Nashville

Eat at your own risk!

Ironically my 2 kids and I went to Nashville (3 hours from home) for my son’s yearly celiac checkup, and I had lined up which restaurants we would be eating at so there would be no question about safe food during our trip. I picked Mangia as our dinner spot for the night following his appt. because there were so many glowing reviews on this app. I prefer dedicated gf but that wasn’t going to be possible for the hours we were there and our location.

My mom ordered her food first, then I told the waitress the rest of us (me and my two kids) would need ours made gluten-free because my son has celiac. (If we’re out somewhere I usually do that so that he can eat off any plate. He is the only one with celiac.) He got a pizza and my daughter got the kids chicken and noodles.

When our food was ready, she brought the chicken and noodles to the table first and set it down in front of my kids. They were both starving so they grabbed some food and started eating. She then brought another plate to the table. After that, she came running back to the table and grabbed the first plate of noodles away from the table. Mind you it had only been about 60 seconds for all this to happen. I said Was that gluten-free? And she said no and walked away with it. I had to coax my son to spit the noodle out of his mouth (he’s 3) And then I immediately burst into tears.

I assume this was a manager that was bringing our food to the table; she came back out and said that she was so sorry and she asked if he had eaten any of it, and we said yes, a few bites. She said that she would take 50% off of our check. I was still bawling at this point, thinking about how he was probably going to spend the entire night throwing up like he usually does when this happens - Especially since we were staying in a hotel out of town, all in one room, without all the luxuries of home, like extra blankets, towels, and clothes.

Anyway, our waitress then came back later and said she’d like to “explain”, and said something about the print on the ticket being really small and how the ink was smudged... so I’m not sure how they did catch the mistake if that is true.

My son ate his pizza of course, but I kept thinking about how he was probably going to throw it all up later that night. Once I pulled myself together I really tried to eat my food, which I got the chicken parmesan. It was decent I guess, I only ate about half of it. Not really sure what to expect from gluten-free Italian food, so I guess it was about average.

All in all, my two big things were that they didn’t catch the mistake before it left the kitchen, probably because the server didn’t write the order down correctly or something. And second, that we still had to pay 50%. I guess they thought that was compensation enough, but to me it felt like a slap in the face that we still had to pay money for the food that harmed my son. I really wanted to say something about it, but my mom was the one paying and didn’t want to make any more of a scene than we already had.

I learned my lesson not to let my guard down even when a restaurant has great reviews from a lot of people.

Just make sure you double check when you order here before you start eating your food that it’s really gluten-free. I’m glad they caught it before he ate much, but the damage was still done.

How confident are you that this establishment takes safety precautions against cross-contact?

— Not very

Is there a gluten-free menu?

— Gluten-free items are marked on the main menu

How much of the menu is available gluten-free?

— Most/All

How would you rate the taste and quality of the gluten-free food you tried?

— Average