| rev:text
| - This is a review that I almost don't want to write. Sassi is a beautiful place, and we had such hopeful expectations for it. But for our party of twelve, on a "Restaurant Week" Saturday evening, Sassi was a disappointment and we are all in agreement.
We arrived at 7:30 and the place was nearly empty. That in itself is ominous on a Saturday night. We are brought to an empty room with a long large table and ask for a round table. Hey, we are all friends and want to be in on the conversation. The answer is no. Simply no. You will have to eat here. The room is very warm, can it be cooled down a bit? It never got cooler. We are seated and yelling across the table in order to converse with one another and then something very weird happens. There is a woman attempting to sing into a microphone, somewhere, and it is blasting out of speakers above our heads. No music mind you. Just this loud, over modulated voice blaring from the speakers. Make it stop. Please make it stop. Our first two requests were ignored but when my wife told the waitress that she would not order food until it stopped, the manager finally put an end to our torture and assured us that it would not happen again.
There is a special wine list with a $29 section and a more expensive list. At the truly excellent Becco, in the Manhatten Theatre District, they have something similar. But there, the wait staff know the selections, and can help you narrow down the choices. No such luck at Sassi. The waitress knows nothing about anything. OK. Fine. I'll go with the Nero D'Avola. I assume it will be a safe choice. Of course, I find out much later that it is out of stock. They allegedly have a wine steward, but he never shows, so I make a random pick.
You all know the drill for restaurant week. Fixed price, three courses, three selections in each category. The appetizers arrive and are served randomly to the twelve of us who proceed to play musical appetizers until everything is settled. The food is good but not great. My eggplant is especially good as is the salad and the bruschetta. For the main course I had a seafood combination, served cioppino.
It was a little nondescript but the seafood was prepared well and the portion was generous. Those having the braised short ribs, commended the texture but not the taste. One person ordered fettuccine which came out very, very late from the kitchen and I'm told, was awful.
The cold and soggy focaccia, brought to the table in generous amounts, was still around at the end of the meal when I would have liked to dip a little in the cioppino. This was not to be. Even though I asked the waitress not to take my plate away, when I turned my head during conversation, it was whisked away.
Why? Why induce new, potential regulars to your restaurant and then treat them so apathetically? Could the built in gratuity be the culprit? Is this a once fine restaurant now on its last legs and ready to close? Who knows? Who cares? There is a bunch of us who made our first trip to Sassi, our last one.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)