Robb M.
Yelp
Every once in a while, I wind up in the position of wildly disagreeing with popular sentiment towards a business. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes, bad. SPOILER: This isn't one of the good ones.
I had made reservations for four for 6:45 on a Saturday. We arrived at 6:45 only to be told that people were lingering and there'd be a wait. I bristled a bit, but you can't always predict how guests are going to turn over, so okay.
After we'd been waiting about ten minutes, the guy who'd told us about the delay asked if we'd been helped. "You helped us," we confirmed. He looked into it again, and told us again that people were still lingering. While he was explaining this, a 5-top that came after us was seated. Without us even asking, he explained that because there were five of them, they had to be seated first. There was only one less in our party, but ok. We were told the server would try to pressure the lingering party to leave quicker, as if the over-booking was their fault.
30 minutes after our reservation, we were finally seated (there were two other reservations who came in and were told there'd be a 15-30 minute wait while we were waiting). I'll admit, being seated 30 minutes PAST our reservation is not a good start.
Look, I've worked in the industry. Stuff happens. I get it. But when it does, you apologize. You admit it's your mistake instead of blaming your own guests. You bring something to nibble on or comp a bottle of wine or whatever to make amends. Not here. We were seated without an apology, with the previous guests being treated like they were rude, and would go without any sort of acknowledgement whatsoever.
I've spent too much time on the 100% poor service we'd had before even seeing a menu, so I'll abridge the rest.
1. There is no kids' menu. This is okay, just saying.
2. They only offer three red and I think one white wine by the glass.
3. The place is small, which I usually dig, but it is uncomfortably small.
4. Our server wasn't rude but wasn't polite. As we saw from how they treated the table we replaced, it's all about the turnover.
5. The sangiovese bottle was good for a $36 bottle.
6. The menu we were handed in the restaurant said the meatballs were stuffed with mozzarella. They were not.
7. The blueberry "chutney" on the butternut squash tortelli was essentially just blueberries. If you told me they used can blueberry pie filling, I'd believe you.
8. Our server checked on how things were when we were nearly done.
9. Just putting it back out there: no one made amends for us waiting half an hour past our reservation in even the slightest way.
10. I was excited about the carbonara. Most places use cream and peas and all kinds of inauthentic gunk. Here promised noodles, eggs, guanciale, pepper, and cheese. It was one of the saltiest dishes I've ever eaten, and the fat wasn't rendered out of some of the big, rubbery pieces of jowl gumming up the dish.
11. The fresh tomato sauce on the spaghetti was good but a little boring.
12. Bread was not refilled or offered to be refilled. I didn't mind since I found it a waste of space but my family liked it.
13. The gnocchi with short rib ragu was amazing. It was the only part of the dinner that would make me come back if the service hadn't been so off the charts awful.
Before coming here, my wife and I thought this might be "our place." It might be, if the food had been as mediocre as it was but the service had been good. Or if the service had been as terrible as it was but the food had been divine. Our experience though was, on balance, mediocre food, uncaring and rude service, and a place more interested in flipping tables than in providing the ones they had an experience worth more than one star.
