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| - We celebrated my mother's birthday back in mid-July here.
The setting was quite impressive. I am afraid that I cannot say the same about the food, most of which was overdosed with oil and, worse, salt. While I realise some of the fried appetizers do come sprinkled with salt, there is a difference between sprinkling and dousing. The risotto special (with baby zucchini and artichokes) was on the verge of being briny. Likewise, the steak Fiorentina that I had with my father came with far too much salt, as were the accompanying rapini, which were marred also by an excessive amount of chili pepper.
Some other observations: the striploin side of the porterhouse steak used to make the "fiorentina" contained a noticeable (and unpleasantly chewy!) amount of gristle, which should have been trimmed prior to cooking. Or perhaps a different porterhouse should have been selected in the first place. The steak also suffered from uneven cooking; though ordered medium rare, as suggested, some parts were closer to well-done, and others were almost raw.
But the part of the meal which was the most disappointing was the dessert. All the desserts were excessively sweet and texturally uninteresting. The Aria pudding was downright mushy. My guess is that the pastry chef was trying to update a traditional summer pudding, but the result was an unappealing magenta-coloured sludge. There was nothing remarkable about the pavlova or the polenta brownie.
We all suffered mild indigestion on the day following the meal.
A few words on the service. The server was quite sweet; however, the tempo between courses seriously lagged, particularly later in the evening. I am all for slow food and in fact do not enjoy being rushed, but the pace between the primo and the secondo and then the dessert was glacially slow.
An aspect of the evening which struck us as particularly odd was the fact that no one said goodbye to us as we left. A proper goodbye is a gracious touch, and much-appreciated small gesture. When it is warm and sincere, it prompts customers to return. When it is absent, it is difficult to interpret.
A suggestion: a restaurant in the price point of Aria should offer some sort of amuse-bouche (or assaggio, as properly called in Italian) at the start of the meal, and a petit four after the dessert. The hard candies that accompanied the bill were pretty to look at, but a bit out of character. My neighbourhood sushi joint also gives candy with the bill. Aria should be a few notches above.
A complaint letter sent to the restaurant has gone unanswered. So they're smug on top of everything else.
Don't waste your money here.
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