Intro
I went here excatly a week and one day ago! I went here for a double date to celebrate an early Valentine's lunch. Our reservations were for 4:30 PM on that Saturday. That was the ONLY date avaiable after calling in a week ahead. Anywho, we got to the resturant and there was a massiave amount of people waiting around the front desk. We checked in for our reservaation and was asked to wait on the side. Walkign away from the front desk, I overheard the wait time was 2 to 2 and a half hour. Luckily for us, we had a reservation. Waiting on the side was like standing in the middle of the road of a busy market...seriously, we had to constantly move out of the way for servers, food-runners and others passing by.After about 20 minute wait, we were sat down at our table. We actually had two waiters who were going to service us. We all decide on doing the Family Style - Classic, which was only avaible for parties of 4 or more. It inculded two appetizers, two salads, four main course selections and two desserts. Family style is basically all-you-can-eat on the items you order, you just have to ask for more!
Appetizer: Mushroom Ravioli al Forno, Calamari Fritté
The calamari was the typical calamari dish that you would find at any other italian resturants. Ours was garnished with a very tiny lemon. We actually asked for another lemon, but our server never remembered to bring it to us. The calamari was crispy and hot. Like I said, tt was just the basic calamari that you can get anywhere. The Mushroom Ravioli was DA BOMB! It was hot and delicious. We had to ask for seconds of this! The ravioli had dicled mushrooms with a white cream inside of it. The cream was also generously drizzled on top. I don't know how else to explain this ravioli, but it was perfect.
Salad: Caesar, Spinach
The Caesar salad was your typical traditional Caesar salad, with romaine lettuce, croutons, Parmesan cheese and the Caesar dressing. The Spinach salad consists of spinach, slices of red peppers, red onions and Gorgonzola cheese, bacon and toasted pine nuts. It had an apple vinaigrette. With disappointment, there were barely pieces of red peppers, red onions and bacon. It had CHUNKS of Gorgonzola cheese. Actually, now come to think about it, there were no bacon at all. Apart from the deceiving description on the menu, the spinach salad also had to be self-tossed. It was a bit of a disappointment.
Entree: Chicken & Truffle Tortellacci, Grilled Salmon Lemon & Herb, Herb-Roasted Chicken, Mom’s Lasagna
The chicken and truffle tortellacci was just like the ravioli. Maybe my review is a bit bias, but this was definitely one of the best choices of our late-lunch. The grilled salmon was cooked jsut right. The salmon filet was a bit small, but it was good. It had a clean taste, garlic and white wine sauce, but nothing was too special about it. It wasn't actually grilled. If anything, it felt like it was steamed, but this could be just the piece that I got.The herb-roasted chicken sat on a bed of spinach and was garnished with capers. Capers and chicken is a tasty mix. The chicken pieces are served already-cut, so it was easy to get and eat. The mom's lasagna was the typical everything you think of when you think of mom's lasagna: ground meats, pasta sheet layers, ricotta cheese and the cheesy-goodness of Provolone on top! It was to die for. We got a second-serving of this.
Dessert: Tiramisu, New York Style Cheesecake
Each slice of dessert was a huge slice! The tiramisu was decent. It didnt have anything particularly great about it. Personally, I would have loved if its recipe called for more coffee and stronger coffee. The New York style cheesecake was topped with whipped cream, a mint leave and on the side there was a berry sauce with blue berries. The blueberries looked out of place on the plate. We were given two plates of each dessert, on one plate of the cheesecake, there was only about 4 blueberries and the other had about 8 blueberries. The cheesecake was average as well. Nothing wow about the dessert.
Overall
I would rate this particular restaurant 1.5 out of 5 stars. The food was overall average. The service was a below average. We had to wait around a couple times to find our waiters, to refill our water. We also ordered Italian Orange Soda, but nothing was good about that, I just tasted like orange soda with club soda. Beware, refills here are not free either. My boyfriend ordered a mojito, it was nasty. There was no sugar at all and it was just plain BLEH. He asked the waiter for sugar. It seemed like the waiters that were servicing us were constantly dropped things. During the 2 hours we were there, they dropped a plate, knifes, bottle opener. One of the waiter came by and asked how we were doing, and it seemed like there was either a blood or tomato sauce smudged across his shirt...let's just go with tomato sauce. It wasn't a small mess, if anything it was really noticeable. Personally, I wouldn't recommend anyone to come here to eat, unless you are extremely craving Italian food, especially ravioli and the tortellaci. Otherwise, you would probably die waiting for a table, unless you made reservations. I probably would not come back to this particular location either, it was packed, there was nothing so special.
No comments:
Post a Comment