Nice place in old Auburn tiny neighborhood, difficult to park so you need to be patient. The decor is rustic and warm and rather pretty, there are some excellent Italian wine bottles in large format here and there giving the impression that someone here has some knowledge of famous producers ( Biondi Santi, Antinori, ...)
The menu is exactly what you find in an Italian restaurant in the USA, no surprise. The room was full of guests, we seated at the bar, many potentiels guests keep arriving during the entire time we were there, giving a good impression on what quality we could expect.
The owner was serving the tables very energicaly, and I noticed immediately the natural charisma and authority that emanated from her presence. She was very welcoming and so was the other staff member. I was surprised to see that only two persons were on staff for this very busy saturday lunch, so inevitably and unfortunately something did not go smoothly. The very good looking dishes accumulated on the distribution table and were not dispatched to the customers table, instead, the owner focused on welcoming more customers and the second staff member continued her very slow moving pace like if there were no urgency. We received our starter eventually, the calamari friti, and there were very good, the two sauces were very tasty and we could tell the deep frying oil was fresh and clean. We were not in a hurry so we did not mind that it took a while for our main dish, a pizza and the clam spaghetti to show up. However, as we were seated in front of the distribution table, we could witness that these dishes were delivered by the kitchen around 20 minutes before we received them. I refused to eat the pasta as they were totally cold and possibly unsafe at that point, the pizza was dead cold but we did not mind as much for that specific dish and by that time we were hungry. The pizza was delicious, the thin crust was crispy, more like a real Napoli pizza than the American version. Later when we finished the pizza arrived some garlic bread we did not touch as we were done. But everything I had plenty of time to see passing by looked really good. I am going to give it soon another try, perhaps it was just an unfortunate busy day with not enough staff...
However, I reviewed here several comments that seems to indicate that this issue is recurrent...Laura, you have a great base here, a potential gem, now , with your long experience, you ought to reorganize the priorities: the food produced by the kitchen need to be immediately dispatched, for sanitary reason and of course reputation, I would be sad to see that an FDA inspection give you a negative note.
The customers would promptly consume and leave, this making room for the next customers waiting in line. read more