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| - When I was in Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley, it was wonderful to drive up and down country roads and stopping past various wineries to sample their wares. We spent one day in each place and at the end of our days, we had fabulous dinners to close out our time. I never made it to The French Laundry, but it's still on my bucket list, so I have to make it back there someday. I never knew that we had anything here in Western Pennsylvania that was even remotely close to the set-ups in California, so when one of my cousins mentioned having dinner at Narcisi, I was totally game.
So, the winery is on the outskirts of Pittsburgh in Gibsonia,PA and unfortunately, I am not a fan of twisty, serpentine roads. We called ourselves taking a short-cut and ending up taking a road that only goats and donkeys should take. I thought that I was going to be sick before we got there...
Once we arrived there, we had a 45 minute wait because we hadn't made reservations. (I would highly suggest making reservations because our wine hostess said that on the weekends the wait can be over 2 hours. (What???) Anyway, it wasn't a problem because we did wine tastings prior to our meal. Tasty! Our party of four enjoyed all of the wines that we tasted and we decided to go the bar area and order appetizers prior to our meals. NOT! There wasn't a seat available in the bar area or any of the other areas that served food, so we had to wait until we were called for our table. Once we were called to our table, that's when the trouble set in.
I know that Pittsburgh weather has been unseasonably wonderful and everyone was aching to enjoy the last vestiges of summer. I also know that the winery had a band playing that evening and that a lot of guests lingered around after listening to the band. However, we had an EXCESSIVE wait time from hell. We waited 30 minutes to have our initial water served at our table. (Not by our server.) Once our server finally arrived and after our orders were taken, it took 45 minutes for our appetizers to arrive. 45 minutes for the Italian Chopped Salad, Caesar Salad and Calamari Fritti. The calamari would have been excellent had it not been served at room temperature. (Somewhat cold "fried" calamari is just not appealing. Since we were starving, we just ate what we had because who knows how long our wait would have been...Plus, our waitress disappeared and someone else served our food and skedaddled!)
Finally, our waitress came back from Siberia and informed us that the rest of our meal was on its way. Off she ran without asking us how things were going. Since my cousin and her husband are vegetarians, they decided to order the Grilled Portobello Mushroom, Zucchini Fritti and Pasta Sophia (without the chicken) for their main entrees. My sister ordered the Spaghetti Bolognese for her entrée. 45 minutes later, the food finally arrived.
Now to the restaurant's credit, the freshly baked homemade bread and sun-dried tomato dipping sauce are stellar. (I actually bought a bottle of the dipping sauce to take home.) The entrees were actually tasty. However, the waits for our food were ridiculous. And as bad as our waits were, the tables on each side of us had worst waits. The patrons at the one table noisily complained about the waits...(Even after our extended waits, we were still able to eat our food and order dessert before they received their entrees. They were actually seated at the same time that we were. I would have been firecracker hot if I waited that long.)
So, my final assessment reads like this:
Winery - A
Surroundings - A
Food - B+ (Would have been an A, except for the cold calamari)
Service - F (I actually drank my sister's water because I asked for more water from our server and she served the table next to ours and then ran back to Siberia. Our server was MIA most of the evening.)
So definitely go, but make reservations and see how your service goes.
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