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| - It's not often that I go to a restaurant and end up leaving feeling both appalled and content at the same time.
Let's breakdown the pros and cons of this place.
Pros: Comfortable seating, perfect lighting, wide selection of fresh pastas, pizzas and wines.
Our table of 3 ordered the following dishes (sharing is caring!):
Beef Brisket Ragu ($18.95) - Had ample amounts of brisket, mushrooms, and onions tossed with fresh pasta. Though the pasta was done perfectly and the brisket was fork tender, the dish in whole could have used more sauce (but then again I am a sauce freak).
Lasagna Bolognese ($17.50) - The lasagna was just perfect. Perfectly cooked fresh pasta noodles smothered in layers of meat and bechamel. Everything was in proportion to one another and held together nicely for the perfect bite.
Scattagengive pizza ($17.95) - Topped with a fresh and light marinara sauce, mozzarella, spicy cacciatore salami and spicy provolone cheese. Delicious. Beware though, if you are looking for a sweat inducing/vision blurring kind of spiciness, then you should look elsewhere. I can only tolerate the spice level appropriate for a 4 year old toddler, but I was actually able to eat this pizza without breaking a sweat. The toppings were evenly distributed and the flavours were well balanced. Oh yeah and lets not forget about the pizza crust. It was fantastic and had a great mouthfeel (crispy and chewy).
Al Salmone pizza ($18.95) - This pizza was topped with mozzarella, italian cream, capers, red onions, fresh tomatoes and cold smoked salmon. Anybody who is a fan of smoked salmon just knows you can't go wrong with the combination of these ingredients. I wasn't disappointed with this at all. It was well-prepared and had just the right amount of everything. I did note that the crust was more crispy (and as a result more dry) than the other pizza as the crust was baked on it's own first then layered with the raw ingredients (onions, tomatoes and smoked salmon).
Cons: Really our only beef with this place was our server, Carmela. She was just completely inattentive and ignored us every chance she got.
Upon being seated, we were only provided with the menu and left alone. No explanation of the menu specials, no wine recommendations, no nothing. We did eventually get water. We finally figured out what we wanted to order, but she was otherwise preoccupied with whatever she was doing. Eventually we managed to get her attention and after our last order, she promptly left again without giving us another second to even ask her about the wine list. She was gone. Correct me if i'm wrong, but I thought in restaurants the staff are always urged to "sell" the alcohol, whenever possible? Apparently our server didn't care, she was perfectly fine with us just drinking our free water. In any case, we had just finished work and a glass of wine was in order so we finally waved her down after 10 minutes. As soon as she gave us the wine list and reluctantly answered our question about the wine she was gone again.
I'm not sure what we did to this server, but she seemed much better with the other tables. Throughout our entire meal, she did not even come over once to ask how our meal was. Now, i'm not asking for a red carpet to be rolled out at my request or for rose petals to be thrown at my feet as I enter the restaurant, but I do expect the same service that is being provided to the rest of the other paying customers.
The only bright spot in the service was from our waiter, he served us our food promptly and was even kind enough to get us some chili oil and bread. He was actually the only reason that the restaurant even saw a tip from us.
So basically, this would have been a 4-star (maybe even 5) experience had the service been on par with the food. The food and ambiance was excellent, but our server, Carmela, needs a total attitude adjustment.
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