"I am always excited when a new restaurant comes to my hood. I wanted to like Vatra so much I actually went twice in one week-lunch and dinner to give it a chance. Actually lunch was pretty good.They start you with a great bread basket with whipped butter with paprika and garlic. The decor is really nice but almost too much for the casual vibe of the menu. I had a pizza with arugula and proscuitto and it was decent.My partner had a chicken sandwich that was decent but not memorable. We also ordered a grilled ( chared romaine) caesar-which was not good-at all. Kind of stingy on the parmesan and croutons and with a creamy dressing that had no hint of garlic or anchovy..then don't call it a caesar.\nWhen we went back for dinner I had the 5.00 glass of wine which was great and we ordered the Brie appetizer, what's not to like about warm Brie but it was topped with an apple chutney-not enough flavor or amount to really blow me away.\nOn to the jicama salad which was a disaster. Truly, one of the strangest salads I have ever had. The salad came in large bowls brimming with chunky strips of jicama with an almost non-existent dressing. It had a few bites of cucumber and very little roasted corn-so essentially a bowl full of jicama which can get mighty boring after a few bites. The best thing on the salad were candied spicy dried mango but even those little gems couldn't save this salad.\nWe also shared a steak with chimichurri sauce-which was a very good sauce but not enough of it to really get the full on flavor, it came with a few and I mean few roasted vegies.\nThe server was okay-you could tell he was new. This place needs to put its A game together to succeed. Arcadia has a lot of good eating and right now this place is not even in the top 10.\nUnderwhelming is the only adjective I can think of."^^ . . "2"^^ . "2010-09-24T00:00:00"^^ . . "1"^^ . "0"^^ . . "0"^^ .