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| - The first time we visited Campagnolo was last October (2013) with another couple and absolutely loved it. In fact, we raved about it to everyone we knew who asked about a new resto to try. My brother finally went a few weeks ago and thought "meh". We thought he was crazy. I realized he was right after my experience on Friday night.
My expectations for good restaurants are not that elaborate, nor difficult to execute given a friendly staff and professional, creative chef: good customer service and good tasting food I can't make myself at home.
My recent visit to Campagnolo lacked both, immensely.
Customer Service:
My husband took me to Campagnolo for my birthday. He made reservations a week earlier for the Chef's Table specifically, and even took the time to call and confirm the reservation the day before. We were looking forward to this ALL WEEK. We arrived RIGHT on time for our 8:30 reservation. The host, that we later found out was the MANAGER, sat us at a tiny table in the corner of the room beside the bathroom. I gave my husband a look and he immediately asked about our reservations at the Chef's Table. The manager's response verbatim, "Oh, there's already people sitting there, but if they leave we can move you there." No apology, no double-checking reservation, no customer service. Period. In retrospect, we should've walked out at that point, but decided to stick it out since the food would be worth it - it wasn't, but more on that later. We both had such an unsettling feeling that we couldn't shake. Our night was off to a horrible start. The tiny saving grace, and why I gave the restaurant 2 stars instead of 1, was our server. I'm now upset we forgot her name, but I think she was only female server working that night. She acknowledged that we wanted to sit at the Chef's Table, apologized and explained that she couldn't think of what happened. She also went above and beyond to accommodate our every request and felt genuinely horrible that our night did not turn out as expected. She even got a couple of items (the cheapest ones) on our bill comped. As for The Manager, not once did he come over to our table to acknowledge their mistake or offer an apology. Inexcusable.
Food:
Maybe the lack of farm-to-table ingredients this time of year made all the difference in the dishes, but our selections were subpar. We ordered some bread thing (no comparison to the nodini at Buca) and the bone marrow as starters. Nothing spectacular. Actually I make better roasted bone marrow at home. We both ordered pasta dishes for our main. I ordered the celeriac agnolotti with oyster mushrooms. Or should I say, one slice of an oyster mushroom. It was was my preference of the 2 pastas, but I think the chef went a little overboard on the celery theme. I think it needed a contrasting flavour to make it a great dish. My husband ordered the lamb ragu pappardelle. Or, what I like to call it, plain pasta with some lamb on top. When I think and make ragu, I think saucy (tomato or some other reduction) and meaty that gives pasta the flavour it lacks. Did not get this at all from this dish. Very disappointing. They comped our dessert so I ordered the sea salt caramel dish. It was very tasty. Too bad I couldn't eat it all because it had rum in it (ordering a mocktail didn't give enough of a clue). But it was the highlight of the meal.
I really hope the owner sees this and does something about The Manager. I could not find an email anywhere on their website to send this directly to them. Acutally, their website gave my Moxilla some kind of pop up ad.
All in all, we will not be returning to Campagnolo, unfortunately, nor will we be recommending it to anyone who asks.
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