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| - Sad to say that Chinato was not as good on the return trip. Wish Yelp would let us give 0.5 star ratings, because I thought it was a 3.5 this time. I'm still holding desperately onto keeping Chinato as my happy spot in Cleveland, because it has potential.
To recap tonight's visit... we arrived late since we couldn't find parking. There's always some special event going on downtown. We managed to find street parking maybe two blocks away. Yay!
Had plenty of people pay attention to us during dinner. Water never left unfilled, bread kept coming. The only thing I have to complain about service, which I would have never noticed in the past, but due to watching too much Robert Irvine on Restaurant Impossible... noticed that one of the servers were not very delicate in putting down serving utensils, appetizer plates, filling water... nonetheless, not too big of a concern. Food came fairly quickly; I think we got the drink within 2 minutes of ordering, and appetizer came just as we were finishing off our first two pieces of bread. Note, if you don't like the salt that they put on the table for the bread, the butter that you can ask for is pretty tasty too.
Drinks: BF ordered the Peroni beer. Big glass of beer for $5. He said it was good.. forgot what he said about the rest.
Appetizers: we ordered the gnocchi (still just as good, bites of heaven; I forgot how the parmasan shavings added a nice bite and contrast to the creamy dough). Also ordered mussels.. huge plate of mussels. BF was unfortunately not a fan of the mussels (but he doesn't like fish... and said the mussels were more fishy than he remembered eating at other restaurants). Thus, had to finish the whole plate of mussels by myself, and left the rest of the gnocchi to BF. SAD. Need to go again sometimes just for the gnocchi. The mussels were good, but after 5 mussels.. you kind of want to just stop eating them. I think they were steamed rare or something; just thought they could have been cooked more.
Entrees: We both ordered the chicken saltimbocca since we had such a phenomenal experience last time. Sadly... it was not as good as when we went in October. I went and looked at some other Yelp reviews, and it seems that after our visit in October, people have been complaining about the polenta being too runny, and not just the polenta in the chicken dish, but also some beef polenta too. Sad. I remember last time, the chicken had a really crispy skin, and the kale was also yummy and crispy. This time, the polenta made it mushy. Also, a little salty, but I'm not sure if that's just because I am a light salt eater.
What made me bump my 3.5 to a 4 were the following factors:
1) They had live entertainment today! There was a band of 3 men playing Italian music on accordian, violin, and some other instrument. So lovely sounding. Made me feel right like I was in Italy.
2) The manager stopped by. I asked him if he was Zach Bruell... embarrassing, lol. He wasn't. Curious about the change in the chicken dish, I inquired, and he went back to the kitchen to find out why the chicken dish was so much more watery than last time. Turns out that they adjusted the water ratio or something, and they're trying to fix that issue now. Compensated us with a lemon polenta cake. I was looking forward to picking out a new dessert since we had that at the last visit, and since it was BF's birthday, would have wanted him to pick out a dessert that he would have liked. Fortunately, he said it tasted pretty good, and that it was better than last time, since the polenta wasn't gritty and dry. Seems like the extra water they put in the polenta worked out for the dessert!
Will return again. I still have hope for Chinato!
On a side note.. found out that Zach Bruell has a new restaurant??? Cowell and Hubbard, apparently close by Chinato's. Looking forward to trying that sometimes.
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