As a part of the U.S. Family Guide bloggers, I was invited to write a review for our local Gatti's. Located at 2921 Pat Booker Road in Universal City, Gatti's offers a fun, family experience for all ages. We went at 4PM with the hopes that an early dinner on Saturday night wouldn't be so crowded. We were wrong. The parking lot was already pretty full.
You can reserve rooms for parties and fun occasions. They also have multiple dining rooms. One of the dining rooms has a large TV where movies play to provide entertainment for the kids while you dine. We chose the Quiet Dining room, though my kids had a hard time keeping their voices down.
Food choices are abundant.
They have various types of pasta and sauces to choose from, a salad bar, myriads of pizza flavors that are ever changing throughout the day, and a dessert set up.
Some of my personal favorites were the Italian type pasta and jalapeño pepperoni pizza. My oldest son devoured a plate of spaghetti right off the start. Normally I can't get him to be as enthusiastic when I make it at home... My younger son loved the macaroni and cheese. Apparently I don't make that right either since he had far more gusto for Gatti's than he has for mine. They have baked potatoes and even potato salad that was pretty good.
From the drink choices, I really loved that there were 4 types of tea to choose from. I chose green tea, though you have regular sweet and unsweet as well as Nestea Raspberry to choose from.
As with any buffet-providing restaurant, clean plates are never ending. You finish one, dump in a receptacle for such and grab a fresh one.
There is a
huge game room to play in. Games are typically .25 or 50¢ each though some cost more, such as the bumper cars or (my favorite) Fruit Ninja which are $1 or more. You can either purchase a game card, or use cash to pay for the games. There's a little something for everyone. One of our favorites was the Goal Rush. You get a set amount of balls and you have to toss/roll them upward and into various point value "goals". We ended up playing it over a few times. There are plenty of ticket-rewarding games. Tickets can be used to redeem prizes. The ticket machines were having issues counting and adding credit to the cards. So the lines were a bit long. But that's to be expected with such a high volume of people using them daily. It was a great experience for my family. My husband is even talking of making it a regular thing. And if you sign up for the Gatti's newsletter, you can receive emails letting you know what the latest deals are. And if you're tired of having turkey for your holiday meals, maybe you should consider taking the family out one night!
