On few occasions have I gone to a restaurant and had no expectations and then end up with such a subpar experience that now that yelp exists I feel it is my duty for my 100th review to help the Yelpdom. Think of it as a sort of review "slump buster".
My wife booked our party here for the mother-in-law's birthday. She enjoys Italian food and our first place was not open on the Sunday we wanted to book so this place was "recommended" to us.
We arrive "fashionably" late for our reservation but most of our party was there for 6:30 and the first thing that strikes me is how quiet it is and how it seems like there is WAY more staff than clients (strike #1). While everyone else was there (about 10 already) with me and my 2 girls and the birthday girl as an exception, it boggled my mind when we reached 7:30pm before any order was taken in our party.
We had a roast set up for the mother-in-law so this burned some time, but not enough to be served our food by about 8:20 (strike #2). We were helped by one server at a time with respect to our orders being taken and our drinks refilled (which was mostly water) and a good 3-4 servers were ambling around the restaurant attending no one. I honestly felt Gordon Ramsey was going to bust out of the kitchen send the staff home and cook us a real meal. It was terrible service.
What sent me over the edge was the panna cotta dessert. It was sweetened mascarpone with chocolate shavings. No thickness or texture, just a poor substitute for actual panna cotta.
There is a "smoking" area which doubles as the patio of the restaurant. Perhaps it was the owner or manager of the place smoking, but this was pretty disgusting and the ACTUAL smoking area was right by the main entrance to the restaurant.
When you walk in, you see a phone booth with letters to the owners praising how good this place used to be (?). Conveniently there are also printed directions on the wall to give to your party on how to arrive here. My suggestion is to go to the phone booth here (even if you do not eat here), call someone and have a conversation along these lines:
Me - Hello (your name here)?
You - oh hi Will what's up?
Me - hey I just called to tell you how much Michel et Angelos sucks!
You - oh wow thanks for that!
Me - yeah here are the directions to this place so that even if the fate of the human race after the zombie apocalypse depended on me or you eating some of this gruel that passes for Italian food, you NEVER come here.
You - Thanks for "slump busting" this one Will, I'm going to buy you a smoked meat sandwich at Schwarz's.
Me - Score major!