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| - Judging from the other reviews here, I must have come on an off-day. My wife and I picked this place because of the high reviews for an Italian restaurant in that part of town, and we went in with high expectations.
The first disconcerting thing is that the perspective on the frescoes on the wall is just subtly off enough to give you vertigo the moment you walk into the dining area. Starting off the meal with a faint sense of ill-ease doesn't help the experience. They have beautiful white cloth tablecloths on the table - they cover that with a big sheet of paper, which totally detracts from the ambiance.
Then came our waiter. I don't know if he had left his girlfriend in the walk-in freezer mid-stroke and was anxious to get back to her, but he was about halfway through our drink order before he was already running away. I almost had to shout across the dining area to get him to hear that both of us wanted a drink, and not just my wife. He disappeared for a long time, and resurfaced after I'd decided, forgotten, and re-decided what I wanted to eat. We put in our order, he disappeared. He returned a reasonable amount of time later with our carpaccio.
The carpaccio was, quite simply, delicious. However, at any of the other highly-priced Italian restaurants in this city, for the same price, we'd get about double. I expected better; at this point, I was already regretting not going to Scarpetta or The Grotto. Once we finished that, they brought out the bread. Normally, in other restaurants, that comes before the appetizer, but, hey, however they want to do it.
I ordered the Tortellini Abbruzzese. It had a nice flavor, but could have benefited from using prosciutto instead of sausage. A stylistic choice of the chef with which I don't agree, I'm sure, but it would have made it more enjoyable to me. That said, I still enjoyed it.
My wife, however, ordered the Linguine Mediterranean. The seafood in it was probably fresh three days prior to us ordering it; by the time it arrived at our table, however, it had a distinctly Billingsgate odor and taste. It was not pleasant. At $22 for a pasta dish, I expect fresh seafood in it. Fortunately, when we got home and gave the three-fourths of it that we had left over to the dogs, they were ok with it. And, of course, my wife won't be happy until I point out that, unlike other quality Italian restaurants, they gave us that nasty Kraft Parmesan-substitute cheese, instead of some fresh-grated Romano or something else of note. Again, the disconnect between what they pretend to be and how they execute is staggering. It's like they're trying to be Olive Garden at Batali prices. It doesn't make sense.
Finally, the waiter, whose conspicuous absence the whole evening was keenly felt, came back and tried to get all chummy with us to order desert. If he'd interacted with us in any way, I'd not have felt my skin crawl during the interaction; however, since he had reacted to us as if we had leprosy from the moment we sat, it came across as smarmy and car-salesman-y.
I hated every second I was in the place, and cannot understand the glowing reviews this place gets. Since I can't imagine that all of the other reviewers are idiots, it really MUST have been just an off night last night. Too bad it was SO far off that they will never get a chance to prove that to me. I wouldn't even accept a free meal from them.
If you are looking for a good night out of high-quality Italian food, hit up the places where Scott Conant and Mario Batali have restaurants. If you want a smaller name, hit the Grotto at Golden Nugget. If you want cheap and edible, go to Olive Garden or Strings. If you want to drop a ton of cash on stuff that my kids could knock together in our kitchen, go to Fellini's.
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