| rev:text
| - I came to Cleveland to visit my Mom and took her to dinner here tonight expecting a good to great meal from the other Yelp reviews.
I'm not sure where to begin with this place.
First of all, the $$ pricing guideline that the first reviewer gave this place is insane ! The designation of $$ is $11 to $30 per person if you follow the Yelp guidelines. The lowest priced entree here is $16, for a plate of pasta with marinara sauce. A steak is $36 to $40 !! Veal is $26 to $34. Bottom line is that unless you want a very simple pasta the average entree is around $30. So how this place gets $$ for price is a mystery to me.
Now to the service...
Service: The waitress was pleasant enough, but they really should teach the wait staff to pronounce the dishes ! Poor girl butchered every other word. "Gnocchi" didn't even sound like a word. We didn't get the olive oil and bread while the table next to us who came in 15 minutes later than us got it fairly quick. When I asked for it, I was told they usually bring the bread after the appetizer. Huh ? OK, whatever. When she took our appetizer plates, she took our forks as well. I asked three times for more forks. Once before the entrees came, twice after. Lastly, the waitress had a laugh that would scare a hyena, and she likes to laugh alot. Not relaxing.
Food ??:
Not great. I was hoping to make up for the rest of the experience with the food, but it wasn't happening. They have a big selection of veal dishes, four or five steak choices and some pasta dishes. We got the "Mariana" appetizer that won some kind of award according to the menu. It was scallops with risotto ($12). The Scallops were cooked perfect, although small. The risotto was good, not great - pretty unremarkable. Overall, the best thing we ate all night. For entrees, I had the Linguine with meatballs, al dente requested. The sauce was boring and the meatballs were literally the size of baseballs - and they were NOT good. I won't go into detail, but they were big balls of meat with very little flavor. The only bright point is that the pasta was cooked al dente, which doesn't matter much when you don't eat more than a third of it. My Mom got the Veal Sinatra. It has spinach and cheese on it with Marinara over the top. It was overcooked, and mucked-up by all the stuff on top. Just too much going on there. $26.
OK, does this guy have NOTHING good to say about this place ? Well, yes. The interior was decorated very nice, great bar, and the outside where we sat is very interesting. They had several very large pictures on the outside wall. Very cool decor.
One thing we noticed is that there were seemingly no people with Italian heritage dining at this place (except us). Maybe that, along with the fact that there are no really great Italian restaurants in the area, is the reason why this place got some good reviews -- nothing good to compare it to. Most of my reviews are 4 or 5 stars. I'm not someone that goes out with the intent of finding fault. In fact I was really hoping this would be a great dinner as I wanted to show my Mom a great time.
Dinner for two with one app and one beer each, no desert or coffee -- $68 before tip. Bottom line is that if I'm going to pay that kind of money for two entrees, one app, and 2 beers, I do expect it to be something remarkable. This was remarkable for the wrong reasons.
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