On paper, Angelo's looks like it should be a great place to eat: a family-owned, authentic Italian restaurant and pizzeria with a laid-back ambience. In reality, the two times I ate at Angelo's were two of the worst dining experiences I've ever suffered in the Clear Lake area.\r
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I made my first trip to Angelo's for a late business lunch on a weekday. The place looked deserted with no one at the host stand and not a single patron in the dining room. We waited for several minutes before a guy poked his head out of the kitchen area, and he acted like we were interrupting his day. On the second trip, I took my girlfriend to Angelo's for a Friday night dinner after one of her coworkers recommended their pizza. On that trip, we were ""greeted"" by two teenage boys at the host station who were just dripping with attitude. These boys refused to even say ""hello"" and spent the balance of our meal staring over at our table and making gossipy remarks to one another. Unprofessional and totally unwelcoming.\r
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The wait staff at Angelo's was hardly any better. On both trips, the waitress seemed like she was in a hurry to get us out the door. Before we had been there five minutes she had asked us for our orders three times, the last time with an almost exasperated tone. All through dinner she kept trying to force a second glass of wine on me before I had even finished my first. The whole staff just seemed unprofessional and inhospitable, qualities you don't expect to find at a family-owned Italian restaurant.\r
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The ambience at Angelo's was also less than stellar. The décor is haphazard, with cheesy neon lighting above the prominent bar and booths that seemed to be upholstered in old curtains. The table in our booth was so far from the seat that my girlfriend and I both had to lean forward just to reach our plates. The dining room was so empty on both of my visits that I felt like everyone in the place could hear every word we said. The tall, very concerned looking gentleman (a manager, I guess?) who wandered around the place scanning every table did little to make either of us feel at ease in their dining room.\r
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The food at Angelo's was lackluster verging on Olive-Garden drab. On both trips, the waitress brought out Pilsbury dinner rolls masquerading as garlic bread. On my first trip, we ordered a calamari appetizer that had all the delicacy of store-bought onion rings. One expects more from an $8 antipasti dish. The lasagna entrée was greasy and made with a sauce that was light on everything but tomato. In fact, most of the food at Angelo's lacked adequate spice, with hardly a trace of garlic apparent in anything.\r
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On my second trip I ordered a tomato basil soup that didn't even come close to the same dish at L' Madeleine. The Margherita pizza that my girlfriend and I shared was just atrocious. The crust was chewy and lifeless, the cheese was stringy, and the bland sauce made Papa John's sauce seem downright Neapolitan by comparison. But what made this one of the worst pizzas I've ever had were the huge raw tomato slices that covered the pie. These suckers were barely cooked, and all they added to the pizza was an overwhelming acidity that killed any flavor it ever had. I'm not quite sure what the chef was trying to accomplish with this, and I'm not sure he even really knew how a Margherita should be made. I've had a few Margheritas in my day, but this was not one of them, the name notwithstanding.\r
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All in all, these were terrible dining experiences. From the rude staff to the bland food, Angelo's doesn't really get any part of the Italian dining experience right. What makes me angry about my two trips to Angelo's is that there are so many quality Italian places in Clear Lake where I could've enjoyed a better experience for the same money. In any event, I won't be wasting any more of my time and money at this disaster of a restaurant.
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