I hate to say this buy our dinner last night wasn't as good as it used to be.
We've been going to Mercato for several years now and since it had been a while since we've gone we thought we'd give it a taste to make sure it was still our fave italian restaurant in Calgary.
We ordered the tagliatelle, bistecca, and green beans. Tagliatelle was fantastic, simple and delicious but could have used a little more bite - in other words a touch on the soft side. Sauce is beautiful and simple. Bistecca was medium and not the typical medium rare!!! We even mentioned it to our server and he didn't even offer to do anything about it or explained if it was supposed to be like that (even though we knew it isn't). We usually just end it there for our meal but thought we'd add some green beans. Never had them before and oh gosh tasted salty!! I had to wash my palate everytime I took a bite. Ok maybe a little exaggeration but it wasn't "add salt to taste" it was more like "salt is the taste"
Anyway, giving this a deserving 3 stars as we still did enjoy our time there watching the chefs, the server was nice just didn't handle the one situation well, and the overall flavors were wonderful! Some tweaks and they would have had 5 stars.
As for it being my fave Italian in Calgary....I dunno I'm willing to try other places, any suggestions??