| rev:text
| - My boyfriend and I decided to check out Chinato for a romantic evening and a chance to try out another restaurant on East 4th Street. We are both social workers so we don't get to do it up like this all the time, so we did the damn thing and got dressed to the nines. Needless to say, when we plan to fork over $100+ for a meal we hope to leave satisfied.
Service: We both have an affinity for good, friendly service so we were really pleased when our server was friendly and down-to-earth. She was very knowledgeable of the menu and made great recommendations. Chinato's menu is complex, large and confusing. The dishes are mostly in Italian and lack any description of the preparation or ingredients... so you really don't know what you are ordering unless you ask. It's a good thing our server was so chill because we had a lot of questions. At one point I asked for a glass of Merlot and she responded with, "Do you like Malbec? Because we have a really great Malbec and it's cheaper than the Merlot..." She really made us feel comfortable and relaxed.
Food: For my starter I wanted a salad and I ordered the Arugula with julienne of pumpkin, roasted turnips, pumpkin seeds, goat cheese and balsamic vinaigrette, at our servers suggestion. It was really amazing. A great start to the meal. The server also recommended that we order a pasta and a entree so I assumed that they'd be small portions. I ordered the Risotto with speck and yellow pepper as my second course. This was actually pretty bland and uninteresting. I didn't even finish it. Which is probably a good thing because our entrees were not small... they were normal sized and by the time I got mine I was already kind of full. Nonetheless, I took the servers recommendation and got the "Deconstructed" Ribollita. I had no idea what it was but she talked about vegetables, marinara and pulled pork in a way that I just couldn't say no. It really was great. It had some hidden lemon zest and cheese hidden among ribbons of zucchini and summer squash on top of potatoes, pulled pork and a really great marinara. I wish I could have eaten more of it but at that point I could only take a few bites. I really didn't want anything else but we decided to split a desert after we saw some delivered to a nearby table. My boyfriend has a nut allergy so we ordered the only allergy-friendly thing on the menu, Lemon Polenta Cake. When it arrived it looked great but upon first bite I was disappointed. I expected a moist, warm lemon-y cake... but it was a room temperature, "stale" textured and somewhat crunchy cake that we didn't care to finish. The lemon ice cream on the top was pretty tasty though.
The only other thing that can be said is that the ambiance of the restaurant is more commercial than I'd expected. I also noticed that while we were there it was LOUD and the table behind us was getting so rowdy that they broke a wine glass. Not really what I expected on a romantic dinner-date.
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