Mangia Bene - Lakeland

This place sucks ass. The food sucks, the wait staff sucks. The preparers don't wear gloves One of the owners is incapable of running anything. I would say don't go here, but the one who owns the land kicked them out. They only lasted 1 year. Just want to give them a **** eating anyways.

Wish I took pictures! Excellent Eggplant Parm, Excellent Chicken Parm, Excellent Ziti, Excellent Salad. This place is by far the best Italian food in town. Best Marinara Sauce anywhere. Period! Highly Recommend, 5 Star experience!

Finally got a chance to try this new family run business on a Friday evening. This new Italian restaurant/shop is now open to takeout and catering orders. They have a lovely large menu and a special pizza oven that I just had to try. This business bills itself as an Italian kitchen and meat market. As I entered, it reminded me of Italian salumaria 's of long ago With its cold case of olives, cheeses and cold cuts, freezers full of Italian foods, and stacks of Imported canned goods. What I found remarkable was The low prices on the canned goods. Even the imported olive oil was a bargain. I ordered a nana style spinach pie pizza. On the website, they indicated that the pizzas are well done and cooked in a brick oven. Count me in. All of the pizzas are one size and mine was cut down the middle and then into parallel slices, like a twin trees pizza. The pie had a garlic sauce base, ricotta cheese, spinach, mozzarella, and was topped with roasted cloves of garlic. It was truly a gourmet pizza. The crust was fabulous and on the thick side. There were just too many roasted close of garlic for me, so I had to remove several from my slices. We also ordered Utica greens which were fabulous. It is easy to order online and my food was ready when I arrived. The market was busy but I had no wait. My only negative comment is that I had wished the people behind the counter wore masks. One had no mask and the other was wearing one below her nose. Can 't have it all.

Mangia Bene, the new store/meat market/restaurant/caterer in Lakeland, is 1 1/2 miles west of Gate 1 of the New York State Fair. The building was home to Ernie 's Lakeland Cafe for 17 years until the roof collapsed in 2017. The owner, Ernie Tuff, decided not to reopen and sold the building. Chris Maroney bought Ernies, rebuilt it and put it on the market. Chris ' longtime friend, Roy Sardo, was looking to open his own restaurant. He had been a part-owner of Attilio 's on James Street, but he wanted to be out on his own. Roy and Chris came up with a concept of a specialty meat market that would prepare high-end takeout meals. At the same time, the building 's dining room could be used as an in-house catering event center, and that was the birth of Mangia Bene, which means Eat Well in Italian. Not only does he make all the food here, he makes most of the ingredients. Roy learned how to make sausage years ago while working for Nojaim Brothers Super Market. He spent eight hours a day in a cooler mixing and grinding meat. He has since developed his own mix that he sells behind the counter here. He bought a Biro meat grinder that can mix and push out 240 pounds of sausage at a time. My wife grew up in Lakeland so Ernies was a staple, and seeing them close and then Mangia reopen, we were excited to try it after hearing all the buzz. We decided to grab some take out today after running some errands. Their take out menu is really only on Facebook even though they have a website with a menu drop down, but that mostly shows their catering. We decided to order a Mangia Meats pizza, a pizza topped with homemade sausage and meatball, soppresatta and hot capicola. They advertise their pizzas as rustic and well done , as they are cooked in a high temp brick oven. They WILL cook it lighter if you ask, but we figured we 'd give their way a try. They do NOT have bone in wings, just boneless and drummys , literal full sized chicken legs, we but wanted to try their fire ice sauce, a mix of hot sauce and horseradish, so we also ordered an order of boneless wings. We ordered right when they opened, at 11. We were told 25 minutes and showed up just about then. When you walk in, you walk into their butcher shop/take our counter, and to the right is their event/dine in area. The dine in area was very nicely decorated, but we were taking ours to go. Employees were friendly and food was ready when we walked in. $33 for the pizza and boneless wings. We got home, opened the pizza, and were immediately concerned. Their pizza is cut into squares and we have a preconceived notion that pizza cut into squares tends to not be the kinda pizza we like, and we were unfortunately correct. While the toppings were plentiful and high quality, we were not a fan of the rest of the pizza. The crust is a thicker crust, we were not a fan of how well done it was even though we wanted to try it, and with the amount of toppings and thickness of the crust, it caused a slightly blackened crust with a undercooked, doughy center. It was a very dry pizza as well, very little sauce. We also were a little disappointed with the sauce on the boneless wings. While they weren 't bad and were decently sized, the sauce had an extremely faint flavor of horseradish and really just tasted like buffalo sauce. Which wasn 't bad, but we were hoping for something different with the fire ice sauce. If you 're a fan of Twin Trees pizza, you 'll probably love this place, as their pizza is extremely similar. We 're not a fan of that style of pizza, and while their employees were nice, prices were fair, and toppings were high quality, we probably would not order pizza again, but I 'd be open to trying their other food, as everything else was fine.

Website ordering was clunky, especially getting our drinks. Good family atmosphere and nice wait staff. Most of the food was undercooked, I tried convincing myself but cannot recommend the food here.