| rev:text
| - "You should have made reservations," our harried server repeated to us ad nauseum throughout our Sunday breakfast here last weekend, This was in spite of being told over the phone that it was fine to come down sans a reservation, and it's not as if the restaurant was packed when we arrived.
So as you can tell, Davio's long-held mystique is dead for me. Ever since I joined Yelp, and especially since I moved to Beechview, I'd been very interested in visiting Davio, but their exorbitant dinner prices kept me at bay. Davio's Sunday breakfast, along with their menu overall, is a fascinating read. Hyperbole abounds, long Italian phrases and wordy descriptions are abundant (Hey stop it! At least I don't speak Italian. Be glad I speak no French! My anti-literate haters would really be steamed!). However, unlike their criminally expensive dinner menu, their breakfast bill of fare (it's only done on Sundays, and for some reason, the breakfast is CASH ONLY) is charitably reasonable. Our two meals combined came in at around $28, which is much less than the majority of their single dinner entrees.
The decor is as quirky as a spinster's apartment. Large, odd-looking, aged ceiling fans and other such fixtures hung imperiously over our heads. If they were animate, they would not give a damn what we or anyone else thought of them.
Unfortunately, none of the staff seemed to care about what I might have thought of the much anticipated Eggs Poached In Tomato Sauce With Bacon and Polenta. The bland eggs were cooked hard and had no runny yolk inside, the bacon was akin to the synthetic, freebie strain offered by chain motels in the morning: think of savory, fatty plastic. A pungent, rustic, chunky tomato sauce almost saved the dish, burying all of its negative traits, almost.
"Something tastes burnt," I mentioned to Kay.
Ah, it was the polenta. Mystery solved. Hoo. Ray.
Sfinci Di San Giuseppi, called something else on the menu and offered by many Italian restaurants and pizza parlors under numerous names, was the lone highlight of our bleak brunch. Weighty pieces of fried dough were dusted with powdered sugar and served with an array of jams, some of which tasted to have been made in-house. Scone-like in their appearance and composition, the zeppoli (???) were chewy and dense like pretzels yet possessed a saccharine flavor reminiscent of donuts.
Awkwardly enough, our waitress brought them out in a basket covered with a cloth napkin after a lengthy wait, put one on each of our plates, covered them back up, and placed them way on the other side of the tablem making them difficult to reach without standing.
Awkwardly still, she left us our check before our meal was finished without a total and then ignored us for the remainder of our visit. Thankfully, I have a calculator application on my cell phone and was able to determine a sum. We left our cash on the table and quietly left while we watched our server dote on Davio's stuffy, monied, middle-aged regulars. Methinks they ain't neighborhood folk based on the decadent, strident, rub-our-noses-in-shit conversations that were impossible not to overhear.
Also strange were the assortment of supposedly fresh-baked pastries that were arranged on plates on a table in front of us. We were never told they were complimentary and didn't find out until one of the battleaxes I speak of went and helped herself to them right before we departed. They sure looked delectable, but we got the sense that we weren't wanted ('you should have made a reservation') and had since lost our appetites due to the unfulfilling main courses and choppy service. Eager to escape we were.
We could see the "clown" painting from their webpage on the wall catacorner from us the entire time we dined. He looked sad and apologetic, as if he saw us coming, knowing that we'd be left chapfallen by our experience.
P.S. I had a taste of Kay's Farmer's Wife Frittata and only tasted the canned asparagus. Goat cheese was also present, but you'd never know if you were blindfolded.
P.P.S. Being a class-conscious person of modest means in a modest neighborhood, I resent Davio charging so much for dinner. I doubt most Beechview residents are able or willing to fork over $30 for some pasta.
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