I have been to Manolo's on several occasions over the past 9 years or so. I don't know if there is different management now, but it is definitely not the quality it was. A few months ago, we had a groupon and we actually had a wonderful meal and service. Pleased, we purchased another Groupon-one for my entire family and another to give as a gift to my brother and his family who recently moved to the area.\r
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Service was extremely slow and when we told them we had a groupon, our menus were taken and we were given a ""groupon"" menu. Fine, except the wonderful meal I had the last time on a groupon available was not on there, nor was my fiance's. We got to choose from some pretty basic meals. THE PORTIONS WERE SMALLER! Yet, for whatever reason, as it was form a groupon that had already been paid for, they listed the prices on the menu. NO WAY are 4 small mozzarella sticks the size of my finger $2 a piece (yep, $7.99 for that appetizer they had listed). The entree was smaller (I would say half the size-I have eaten the entree I ordered several times before). The bread was just plain rolls-no garlic anything-and they came out cold-weren't even warmed. No fresh parmesan-in shaker jar. And the food arrived at our table lukewarm. The dessert was crazy-Spumoni listed on menu at $5 was the equivalent of one large scoop of icecream. The cannoli-I've never seen cannoli this size-was also-the size of my finger. I felt so bad, after dinner, we went to Sergio's and got a regular size Cannoli. Being Italian myself, I was rather disappointed, especially with the Cannoli and the sauce on the pasta-very bland. Best pizza in Zhills is Capri. Best Italian (AUTHENTIC Italian) is Piccola Italia. The atmosphere in Manolo's is nice and with the groupon, the meals came to about $10 a person which still was a deal, but certainly not half price-given the portions. If the $94 total bill would've been what we had to pay, I'd never eat there again, so I hope that this was just a groupon thing. I had told my family about Manolo's and bought a groupon as a gift for one of them-kind of embarassed now after talking it up-knowing what they're going to get. And every other Italian restaurant I've been to have good (REGULAR sized Cannoli-Francesca's in Dade City, Sergios, and Piccola Italia-the ones we got are the same size Gigi's Cupcakes puts on top of her cannoli cupcakes-miniature size (oh, by the way-listed as $2.75 on Manolo's menu.....I don't think so).
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