I want so badly to say that my husband and I loved this place but we just did not.
Small, independent restaurant in Lakewood that has the feel of a small Italian restaurant in NYC. What could be better right? Well a lot actually.
The service was so so. Our server was nice, a little overzealous with the black pepper but if I had an awesome button press battery operated pepper grinder I might be too. The place is tiny which means it's hard to hear anyone speak, and if you get seated close to the door all you will hear is the conversations of people waiting for a table. Normally this is a good omen for the food to come. Not so much.
Let's start with the salads shall we? All the pasta dishes here come with a salad. It's your standard house salad consisting of iceberg lettuce, carrots, cucumber and tomato but add in some baby greens. I love baby greens however not with iceberg lettuce. They just do not taste well together especially when the iceberg was limp. LIMP!
The entrees were more of a colossal fail than the salads. My pesto pasta was GREASY and way over-spiced. It felt like I was eating straight cloves of garlic. I had to put so much cheese on the pasta just to make it less slimy and to tone down the fire-garlic. I also ordered Italian sausage with my pasta. Which if you look how ordering meat with a pasta goes it appears it comes as an addition to the dish. No. In fact the sausage came drenched in red sauce. That sausage was the only thing we had worth eating. It was mild but spicy, tender, juicy and meaty and cooked to perfection. The red sauce was on the sweet side of sweet and low so we won't even get into that disaster. My husband's food was no better. The alfredo was RUNNY and bland. It was like cream. Just cream. No garlic no cheese and most certainly no flavor.
And here I must add when I see large and small on a menu when it comes to portion size I expect there to be a difference. I really didn't see one my small looked like the same amount of pasta on a smaller plate. Not worth the extra to go for the large.
All in all there are so many better cheap independent italian restaurants out there to eat crappy pasta. Find somewhere else to eat.
Don't miss:
The sausage was yummy. I think it would make a good pizza.
Hit or miss:
Getting a table
Avoid like the plague:
pesto
alfredo
and eating at this atrocious Italian restaurant.