This used to be a pretty solid bistro type restaurant with a somewhat seasonal menu.
Now it's an Italian restaurant with a larger menu, and much worse food.
Service was good like normal for an MTs restaurant. There begins, and nearly ends, the positives of this place.
We ordered two mocktails, the strawberry mint and raspberry lime Rickey. They hadn't made sure the Rickey was mixed, they just poured soda water on top of the raspberry lime mix, and called it a day. Mixing it sufficiently basically turned the whole thing completely flat, because the syrup was too thick. The strawberry mint drink was MUCH better, so I was hoping the raspberry lime was a fluke.
We ordered the meatballs as an app, and they were actually not bad. They weren't stellar, but not bad. They came out hot, but the cheese very quickly congealed, while the tomato sauce was scorching hot.
The garlic bread was good, but in the way that if you dump garlic oil and cheese on bread, literally anything is good. They used too much oil, and cooked the hell out of it so it would remain crispy. The meatballs I'd say were well above average for a chain restaurant. Pretty tender, reasonably well seasoned, and pretty large. Thus ends the highlights.
Our entrees were absolutely terrible. I ordered the fig jam and prosciutto pizza. Now, I'd had the pizza on offer at MTs before. Many times, actually. They need to hire whoever was doing it back then, because this shit is absolutely abysmal. The pizza wasn't really crispy on the bottom, the prosciutto and ricotta was tasteless, and the entire thing was drenched in a sickly sweet fig jam, covered in arugula. NO AMOUNT of arugula could cut through that much sugar. The whole thing just tasted like fig jam, that's it. I ate about a third of the pizza, and the rest went in a box. My wife tried it when I got home, and she thought it was awful as well. I threw the remainder out.
My son had the bolognese. Apparently it's an homage to someone famous I didn't recognize's recipe (per the menu), and it was also terrible. They need to box that recipe up and send it back. That was just a plain old meat sauce, and not even a good one. Good ragu de bolognese is supposed to have deep depth of flavor. This sauce had a kiddie pool of flavor. A kiddie pool ordered from Wish.
It said it was served with pappardelle, but was actually served with mafaldine, I think. I'm not an expert in pasta types, and this isn't one I've seen before,however it absolutely isn't pappardelle. They don't even bear much resemblance to one another. I think they did it so the bolognese would cling better to the noodles without having to combine it properly before service, but I'm not certain.
This is an Italian restaurant that doesn't even know what kind of pasta they're using. I think that kind of says it all right there.
If you wanna pay $80 (two people) for marginally better Olive Garden, you've found your spot.
If management is anything like it used to be, they'll reach out about this review. Their service is normally top notch.
In this case, they can save the typing. I'm going to try it one more time, out of fondness for what MTs used to be, and then I'll either amend my review, or leave it as is. And if I leave it as is, I won't be back.
This place is trading off MTs rating right now. I'm curious to see how long that lasts. read more