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| - First, I'm a tough reviewer. A five or even four star review is not common.
The restaurant is nothing to write home about from the outside. Very dated entrance and setting. It's a bit like stepping back 30 years to a local Italian eatery.
Service was very good. All staff were efficient, friendly, courteous.
Food was good. Not exceptional, but solidly good.
Wife started with the soup of the day, which was okay. I had the house salad, which was okay. Nothing special so far. I liked the basket of bread, my wife thought it wasn't very good.
Had the muscles in a white wine sauce as an appetizer. It was very tasty. The sauce was exceptional. But relatively small portion, and relatively high priced.
The calamari, as you would expect in a higher priced Italian restaurant, was very good. Lightly breaded, perfectly cooked, it was tender and tasty. Decent portion. I would definitely order this again.
For dinner, my wife had some variation of veal scallopine. My wife thought it was tasty, but the portions were very very small for a $24 entree. Sauce was good... a common theme here.
I had their seafood pasta ($25). It was a medium sized bowl of pasta, didn't taste fresh (boiled dried), with a good red sauce and a fair portion of good seafood.
My wife had the cheesecake for desert. Very thin little piece, nothing fancy.
All in all, we felt that the food was good. Service was excellent. Setting was fair... a very dated but still nice setting.
What we had a harder time with were the prices. We just felt that everything was about 30% more expensive than it deserved to be. They obviously don't spend much on the restaurant setting. So I don't see how they can justify it. If I had paid $16-17 for my bowl of pasta, then it would have been fair. But not $25. Not for the portions or the ingredient cost.
Perhaps that is why they were near dead empty on a Sunday night (not a busy restaurant night, I know, but still).
In other words... I enjoyed my food and time here, but not the check. And so, as a whole, this place gets 3 out of 5 stars. It's very likely I won't be back, but if someone else was treating me and wanted to take me there, I'm sure I would very much enjoy my meal.
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