When it's your father's birthday, you venture to where he wants to dine. Through his own searchings, he fell upon this place, though if he/we had a chance to jump in a DeLorean and redo the night, we might've picked elsewhere. Let me explain.
Trattoria is a quaint little spot in Roslyn which goes well with the quaint feeling Roslyn gives off. The other feeling Roslyn can give off is $$$ and Diane embraces that pretty accurately. The restaurant can be a bit overshadowed by the bakery/cafe that Diane's is more commonly known for, but more on that later. Both are found next to each other with a cute outside area that works well for dining or dessert when it's a bit warmer out. Inside trattoria is a small dining room and bar with a clean cut, fancy feel. It's around what you might expect from the location.
The menu has a nice array of Italian dishes, meats, seafood, and specials, even though they were still rocking summer fare from the large word at the top of the page. A bread basket donned our table to start, and it was filled with three different types (including some fabulous crusty cheddar crackers) and accompanied with dipping oil which made for a great way to start off the meal. Remember that for later.
We then went with two apps to share: baked clams and fried zucchini blossoms. This is where things took a turn for the not-so-tasty. The clams sounded good on paper (chopped with sea scallops and breadcrumbs) but once they hit your pallet it tasted more like eating the grungy remains of a finished seafood platter. It was a flavor I quickly wanted to extinguish so I tried the blossoms which weren't as flavorful as I had hoped, but did the trick in covering up the clam taste.
For the main dish I went with spaghetti carbonara. It wasn't too heavy, and though a bit salty was a pretty good dish.....but, I feel like I've had better with less impact on my wallet. I also tried my sister's ricotta ravioli and my mother's fettuccini bolognese and found both had a similar end result (Dad had the lamb shank which he enjoyed so I guess there's some brownie points in there).
Dessert time. Even though we were a little full, we decided to share the warm apple cider donut with maple walnut ice cream. It was pretty small, but extremely fresh and had a nice cinnamon apple bite with great contrasts of warm and cold temperatures.
So, moral of the story? Let's see....the bread and the dessert were the best parts of the meal, and they are more known for their bakery. Hmm, I guess that's pretty telling of where the effort goes to in their food creation/preparation.
Overall, Trattoria Diane has a nice ambiance and decent menu options, but nothing necessarily worthy of your consumption (or your dollar). But, there's enough good flavor from the bread and dessert to warrant a return trip....to the bakery that is. read more