rev:text
| - First, the good: the restaurant is really quite nice, aesthetically. The patio is nice and allows for a bit of an escape from the traffic and otherwise bland surroundings of Centre street. The interior is spacious and tastefully decorated, despite a few drywall repairs on the walls which are unpainted. Nothing's perfect, I suppose. The brunch menu, while small, has a nice balance between traditional breakfast/brunch options and more creative dishes with Italian flair.
I'd give the food itself a 3.5 out of 5. It was relatively decent but nothing overly impressive. The ingredients seem to be high-quality, for the most part, but overall it was slightly bland.
The bad: slow slow slow service. There were maybe 6-7 other tables, including a large table of 8 or 10. Despite that, it took close to an hour to get our food. On top of that, there wasn't much attention paid to our table. Our beverages took roughly 10 minutes, and every time we had a request of the server it was either forgotten about or it took several minutes. They were somewhat apologetic for the slow service, however they offered no concession. They had what appeared to be fresh-made chocolate croissants which they were selling at the front, it would have been nice if they would have offered us something like that to keep us satiated while we waited so long for our food; especially at brunch service where folks have likely not eaten anything all day.
One other thing I observed was at least one of the kitchen staff eating food in the window. He appeared to be the 'garnish' station before the food is expedited, and that put me off a bit. After I saw that I saw the same person touching his face, and I noticed that he wasn't wearing gloves or anything. So when I saw the parsley spray balled on our dishes as they finally arrived at our table, I was a bit trepidatious and slightly nervous/grossed out.
I may try it out again for dinner, but I hope they figure out some key things about operating a restaurant in the meantime.
|