Jen M.
Yelp
We came here last weekend to meet my husband's aunt and uncle for dinner. We were able to get a reservation for 6:45pm when we called at 3:30pm which gave me pause - it's literally impossible to get a reservation at any decent restaurant in the Buffalo area without calling at least a few days in advance. Plus, the reviews appeared less than favorable, so I really wasn't looking forward to making the 50 min drive there at all. But, we had already committed to going and our aunt and uncle highly recommended it, so there we went.
The complimentary bread basket was nice - there was a mixture of breads and it also came with a plate of various toppings such as olive tapenade and something with eggplants, I think. For apps, we got the stuffed banana peppers and the lamb lollipops. The peppers were small but tasty, and decorated with some kind of a spring mix salad. The lamb chops was also covered with a pile of spring mix as well as what looked like shoestring breaded fried onions? I'm not sure - I didn't try them. What was disappointing and questionable was that 1 of the 4 lamb lollipops was just a piece of bone with no meat on it whatsoever, it looked like the bone with the meat broke off and disappeared somehow - but how did the person plating it not notice that? Or were they hoping that we'd be so distracted with all the other random stuff on the plate that we wouldn't notice? Anyway, they fixed it by sending us 2 more lollipops, but still - not a great first impression.
For entrees, I got the clams linguine with white sauce, my husband got the gnocchi with pesto, and our aunt and uncle got the seafood scampi special (lightly breaded lobster, shrimp, and scallops with fettuccine and some kind of white sauce). My clams linguine was good - a little salty than I'd like but that wasn't an issue. What was an issue though was that i consistently bit into sand as I chewed on the clams. I believe everyone else enjoyed their dinners. For dessert, I got the tiramisu with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and our aunt/uncle got the cannoli. The cannoli came with the ice cream instead of the tiramisu, but they fixed it by getting me a side of the vanilla ice cream.
All in all, I did not enjoy the experience. There was a table next to us who were on their way out and ran into a large group of people (6-8 people) that were coming in for dinner, so they spent about 30 minutes hovering around that table and ours, standing around chit chatting very loudly and bumping into us constantly. Our server seemed to know them all personally and did not seem to care that it was disturbing our dining experience. She was also not very attentive most of the night and only came around to deliver our food, and tended to forget/delay certain things. She also wrapped all of our leftovers together in a single bag, and didn't seem to want to fix it so we just said we would figure it out. Luckily our aunt travels with reusable bags in her purse now that single-use plastic bags are banned in NYS, so we ripped open the tightly double knotted plastic bag and dug out her leftovers for her to take home.
For the amount of money we spent on this dinner ($320), it was not the experience I expected whatsoever. It's safe to say that I will not be returning.