Overall we feel it was a huge disappointment and it's extra painful to have hosted a 5-person celebration and to have wasted $350 on a very average meal.
Server was extremely professional, versed in every dish or drink, pleasant and thoughtful. Five stars!
Table bussers were mixed. The guy clearing was friendly and helpful. The man filling waters needs training. He stood at the end of our 6-top and expected us to pass glasses down the table to him! Absolutely gross and unacceptable; you don't have everyone at the table handle drinking glasses in a post-COVID era, if it was ever considered acceptable prior to that anyway (not anywhere I've ever been). There was plenty of room to walk all around our table, absolutely no need to make everyone do his work to fill it. What's health code on this? Yuk! Zero stars because his bad behavior cancels out the other pleasant busser.
Drinks took a REALLY LONG TIME to come out. When you make a table wait so long as we did for each and every course on a DUTS night, just get the damn drinks to the table so people can enjoy something. We just felt forgotten from the start (forgotten by the kitchen and bar, not our server). Our server kept checking in, and her busser was in charge of drink delivery, but come on! So friggin slow. Over the whole meal my party had a rye sour, a Bulleit neat, a Manhattan, a virgin berry mojito, and a sangria. All were okay. Again, just having to wait forever leaves a lot to be desired, and then an okay drink shows up, and you didn't really redeem yourself, ya know?
They provide no salt, and no bread. Again, a $350 meal with no salt shaker and no bread! If your table gets only pizza, fine don't serve bread, but we ordered entrees (pizzas shown in my photos were 1 child and 1 appetizer). It felt super cheap to not get bread with our $30 to $40 entrees!
That lacking salt really came into play because despite the delicious-sounding menu, the flavors promised did not show up in the food. Salt was requested to try to revive every single dish, except the mussels, which I'm told were ironically way too salty, to the point where our diner had three bites and took the rest home to doctor it with his own culinary skills. That's really not acceptable at all, especially for what they charge.
Mushroom funghi pizza app had a very mundane portobello type flavor (not truffle-y or dynamic with other mixed shroomy tastes), and no bite or zest of
authentic Parmesan, and the Balsamic(?) was overpowering and very sweet. The crust was way way too flat, and burnt, which is not good eats to people with honest tastebuds.
Eggplant Parm app was very pizza shop standard, but it was half the portion for pizza shop entree price. It needed salt, but otherwise flavors met the pizza shop standard (not fine Italian restaurant standard).
The artichoke poppers wrapped in prosciutto app was antagonizing. The prosciutto was absolutely one of the best I've had, but that artichoke was only slightly flavored with that pickle-y sour taste you expect from it, especially given the flavor plays they're depicting in the menu. The ball batter is cheap Sysco frozen standard. Just a shame to mix good prosciutto with what tasted like Sysco deep freeze crap.
The short rib poppers app, absolutely a rip off! Short rib had a cat food-grade flavor; canned, cheap, and bland as a doctor's stomach upset diet! The "cheese" inside looked and tasted like cauliflower rice. It just spilled out like so many silicone beads, and gagged me trying to force myself to try it.
My son's pizza was thin, floppy and the cheese was very cheap looking and tasting. I wish I'd walked down the street to Pinocchio's for a slice; leagues better!
The ribeye was okay. It was not remarkable but it honestly alerted me that the kitchen IS capable of rendering a meat flavor of some kind.
Also, our salmon diner was content, but she is not very discerning. Just sayin!
Mussels, as mentioned, were over-salty, and spiced too much for the flavors of the dish (coming from a diner who likes his spice).
Beignets with Nutella and whipped cream were decent (if you are a child who didn't get over Nutella in the 90s). Menu had various fried dough with sugar options, so not a lot of excitement.
The rub was that our server did her best and gave very good service, so we left 30% tip for her hard work, but NOTHING else in the entire experience was worth this hefty price tag.
Just a very very poor experience, and a shame our celebration was deflated by the bus-your-own, no-bread-having-ness, flavorless food. We won't be back. read more