Jessica S.
Yelp
3.5 stars
At dinner with my work team, a group of five, celebrating the in-person arrival of our one remote colleague, and the first time the four of them got to meet each other in person (she started during the pandemic, so they've only ever seen each other over Teams.)
We had an early-ish reservation, and our table was ready for us when we arrived. The service started out really well - before the majority of us arrived, my manager had placed an appetizer order for the table to share (listed as "Antipasto Capri Blu for two, $24, I'm not sure if they charged us more to feed five), and our waiter was attentive and friendly.
After drink orders were placed, though, we had to flag people down for help and attention. I was waffling between the fish special (sea bass) and the Brasato di Manzo (basically braised short ribs, $30); I landed on the Brasato di Manzo.
Thing is, even though I ordered that, it's not what I got. The Brasato di Manzo was supposed to be, per their menu, braised short ribs in a red wine and herb sauce, served on a bed of home-made mashed potatoes. What I got was wide, flat noodles in a meaty sauce, with greens, tomatoes and some slices of sausage.
The fact that our meals took so long to get delivered stopped me from bringing this to their attention. The added fact that the dish was delectable helped, no doubt. The flavor - not sure what it was, because I have no idea what I was actually consuming - was rich and deep, with a hearty texture added by the noodles and tomatoes.
The rest of my group really loved their meals, as well - lots of yummy noises were being released around the table. And my boss kept asking for bites of my pasta, which was hilarious.
Two of my team did also find it necessary to order dessert (SO much food, I was too stuffed and had a nice helping of leftovers for the hubs' lunch the next day). They ordered a Vulcano (chocolate cake, $8.50) and an Apple & Vanilla Tart ($9.50), plus one colleague got the dessert special, an affogato that he polished off on his own.
Remember how I said we had to wait a minute for our entrees? The wait for dessert was even worse. My boss was fidgety by the time the sweets came out, and that was after we had to flag someone down to ask for a status update.
The plates were plopped down in the middle of the table, and instead of handing us each a new spoon to dig in, they placed these tiny spoons *on* the plates, which were covered in melted ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate by the time they got to us.
And oh my goodness, people - when it came time to pay the bill. So we had to ask the boss-like-lady for our bill twice. And when it came, my boss noticed that they'd added a $165 bottle of wine to the bill, along with a couple bottles of sparkling water - which we had not ordered. She called it out to the other boss lady, who proceeded to give my boss all kinds of attitude about the bill. No apologies, no trying to smooth over the situation, she just made my east-coast boss angrier and angrier. By the time it was all squared away, I could tell that she just wanted to GTFO.
I'm still giving them 3.5 stars for the quality food and the initial welcome by our waiter, but knocking off stars for everything else.