SUMMARY: Mediocre food…read more
Despite the great reputation, well adorned facility, stellar location, and impressive menu, everything I ordered proved consistently disappointing. Calling this food ordinary is, at best, an overstatement. At each turn, my efforts invoked in salvaging the (food) entries was met with failure.
Starting with a simple Caesar salad, the lettuce tasted several days old. Drenched in ordinary tasting salad dressing, the romaine lettuce became soggy from the presence of excessive dressing. The dressing was too strong in taste, akin to store bought lower priced varieties, and from this, proved difficult to eat. The portion was generous, however.
WARNING: Do not order the minestrone soup. To explain:
The minestrone soup proved ultra disappointing. With the amount that I paid, $12, for a bowl, I was expecting it to be of meal-like quality. Instead, it was also challenging to consume, being so vinegary, possessing a handful of some tomato slices and little else. It arrived lukewarm. Instead of ample carrots, beans, celery, onion, etc., with typically a delicious broth, all that I could detect was slimy tomato slices in a pool of vinegar. The "chef" needs to study quality minestrone soup recipes and completely start over, especially if customers are charged $12 for such. I was so looking forward to a quality and hearty minestrone soup. I haven't tasted anything so pathetic yet simultaneously overpriced, in years. Have they tasted this? It pains me to speak so passionately about something like this. But it was a disaster.
The house bread? It was crunchy, also seeming to be dated, not stale, just not fresh. It wasn't warm. It was dry. The garlic butter was fine, but following the theme, ordinary, at best. I tried everything to make at least the bread come alive, heaping massive piles of garlic butter on it. Nothing could rescue the bread either.
No olive oil was to be found anywhere on the table or tables in my vicinity.
Very friendly staff was present, but their inexperience and lack of polish became annoying. Whatever virtue that the "soup" might have had was lost as it got even colder while she was talking ceaselessly to me. Yes, it arrived lukewarm before she was conversing.
Friendly service, even if awfully informal, can't compensate for such a poor price - value relationship and mediocre food. I cannot recommend this restaurant. Perhaps they do a superior job on pasta dishes. Yet, upon perusing the menu, I couldn't find just a small or half portion of spaghetti. A jr. high aged boy near me somehow managed to order a small plate of spaghetti. While it looked ordinary, such would likely have proven sufficient tonight, even if such was likely only available on the children's menu. If this restaurant once served fresh and delicious food, something, at least of late, has woefully gone awry in the kitchen.
