Reid H.
Yelp
Called once half an hour before they opened and twenty minutes after they opened to make a reservation, but no one answered either time. On the website, the only "make a reservation" option is only available in the pop-up banner that seems like a reservation for a July 25th promotional deal only. So that was confusing. But we showed up, and they were able to accommodate.
When we got there, we got a free spritzer, and a small dish of seasoned cucumbers, which were both a nice touch on a hot summer day.
As a server, I'll say that they cleanliness of the actual menus that get handed around all day are a good indication of the cleanliness of the kitchen, since both of them are things that need to be cleaned religiously. The menus were dingy with food stains on them, which was kinda gross for a "nicer" place.
The server didn't allow us to order an appetizer first and then entrees later (only take full orders, but not sure why - everywhere from Denny's to The Palm to Izakaya Den will take staggered orders...but maybe this is a norm in Brazilian-Italian cuisine?). We were clearly struggling with understanding the menu, but there were no actual recommendations from the waiter, and recommending house favorites is pretty standard in fine-ish dining, especially with foreign cuisine. He said he'd take our full order and course it out for us, but we got the antipasti and the salads less than a minute apart.
For the antipasti, the fried artichoke were really good at the first two or three bites - the sauce cut through the earthiness of the artichoke and the crunch added a nice texture that livened it up a bit...not your normal, boring lemony sauce that everyone does with artichoke. But after about four bites they were overwhelmingly salty, and we couldn't even finish them. I know artichokes are generally a salty food, but compared to what I have had in Italy and Chile, which I could eat for days, they were much, much saltier.
I got the brussels sprout caesar, expecting something interesting, but it was essentially a giant heap of coleslaw, minus the sweetness. Not terrible, but definitely nothing to write home about, and not worth the $14. Take the extra salt off the artichoke, and move them to the caesar dressing. I was eating both at once to try and balance the two extremes.
Then we finished our salads, and the entrees took a while. So, either course it correctly or take staggered ordering. I still tipped $40 on $130 just to impress my date, but the service wasn't commensurate, sorry to say.
The entrees came, and they weren't bad, but the portion of the crab agnolotti was really, really small. To be fair, the menu did say "tiny pillows" of crab-stuffed agnolotti, but I assumed that if they were tiny, there would be a whole plate of them. I think there were maybe eight tiny little guys in a huge pool of butter sauce for $34, if I remember right. They were absolutely delicious, but I wouldn't have ordered them if I had known there were so few of them.
My friend got the chicken parm, and we got a kick out of how huge his plate was and how tiny mine was. Maybe I should have expected that? Not super well-versed in Italian food, but as a server at a high-end sushi restaurant where you're serving a foreign cuisine, it's kinda my job to pay attention to portions and advise on the menu so nothing is ever a surprise when it arrives. Like, when a guest orders only a couple nigiris, I just say something like, "Those nigiris are an excellent choice, but we do recommend supplementing it with [XYZ recommendation] since it is a smaller, richer item on our menu..." Luckily, my friend shared his massive chicken parm with me so I didn't go home hungry.
At the end, we didn't opt for dessert, but they gave us a small, complementary blueberry something, which was nice. We both tasted it and said, "OMG it's cake frosting!" It tasted exactly like the pre-made cake frosting you buy at the grocery store, albeit smooth and not gritty. I still finished mine.
It was nice to have so many small, complimentary touches to the experience, but for the price ($130 for two people without any alcohol), I'd say still not worth it. It seemed that they were trying to win you over by just throwing a bunch of tiny, free things at you.
Overall, 7 out of 10 for the food, 6 out of 10 for the service, and 4 out of 10 for total value.