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| - If there is one cuisine I know, it's Italian. This place came highly recommended, so we drove almost 45 minutes to try it out. Flash forward--I'll save myself 20 minutes and just go to Mia Bella in Little Italy next time.
For some details now. I do love little, "hole-in-the-wall" places, that's for sure. And while this doesn't really qualify for that because it's located on a really cool side street just over the bridge to Lakewood in Rocky River, it is really, really tiny. I had to squeeze through seats to get up to use the restroom. Our server barely had room to get to us to serve and clear our table. Good think she was skinny. I have to believe that must be a pre-requisite to work here. I had visions of applicants being turned down for jobs, and the reason was "sorry, you won't fit between our tables".
But let's judge on the food and service, right? Trying not to be bothered by sitting virtually on top of the neighboring tables, we ordered. 2 in our party ordered the gnocchi, which was supposed to be their signature dish. I had spaghetti aglio oglio, and our 4th had some pasta with Neapolitan sauce, I forget the name.
The bread was tasty, crusty on the outside, soft inside, just the way I like it. And the salad was very good, topped off with some homemade lemon-olive oil dressing. Great for bread dipping.
My aglio oglio was good, but no better than what I make at home, so that was a bit disappointing.
And the gnocchi...oh, the awful gnocchi...they were like mush. Maybe it was an off night, but had I ordered them, I certainly would have sent them back. Grandma made gnocchi, homemade, and they are supposed to be like potato dumplings. Theirs were like little balls of mashed potato. My wife and mom ate them anyway, but really didn't like them. And dad said his Neapolitan sauce was "good".
Service was ok. Our server really wasn't very attentive, didn't check back after delivering our entrees, which is probably why the gnocchi didn't get sent back. Our dirty dishes lingered longer than I would have hoped, as well.
So is this the worst place ever? No, of course not. But will I go back? No way. Not when there are so many other great Italian joints in town. I guess I'll never know if those gnocchi get any better...
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