WatcherMania7
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The good:
Buzzing atmosphere, interior is impressive with high ceiling, columns etc. Busy on Sunday which is usually a good sign.
Portion sizes on pasta mains were large.
Sauce flavours decent but not amazing.
Bruschetta toppings were good.
The bad:
Service was quite inconsistent.
Male manager was friendly. Female waitress 1 was a bit scattered but got the job done.
The pasta appeared to be cheap supermarket dry pasta, the kind you pick up for $2.
Then the mushroom madness: if you're going to describe the mushrooms in dishes as a prized edible mushroom like porcini, then they better be porcini, not button mushrooms, which they were. One costs $8pkg the other multiple times more.
I asked for a side mushrooms only if they were porcinis, which the waitress said she would check if they could do that. After coming back she said they can only do button mushrooms on the side because the (dried) porcinis would not be nice. I said I'd cancel them.
Fine, keep your mushrooms or whatever.
Then when the mains arrived and lo and behold, button bane arrives. On top of this, the venison dish which was also supposed to have porcinis was also peppered with baleful buttons, which were not even cooked well - they were mushy and bland.
Then when female waitress 2 cleared our mains I told her the side of mushrooms was, wrong she replied that they just thought they'd send out button mushrooms just in case. This made me think she was being dismissive/expecting me to pay for them, so i repeated that they were not porcinis. At which point she sort of snapped, saying "you won't be charged for them"
Rude. How hard is it to just smile and say "sorry about the mushrooms, we won't charge you for them"
Like others have said, the food is serviceable but bland and uninspired, and clearly of supermarket quality. Service needs sharpening up. Atmosphere was nice but ruined by service.
It clearly has potential. Just revamp the menu and train the FOH staff and you've got the best restaurant in town. A shame.