Marta H.
Yelp
This restaurant has amazing reviews & although we have lived in the area for years we had never eaten here & decided to give it a try.
I love the outdoor patio.....reminds me of eating in an alley of a restaurant in Italy & felt worlds removed from the hustle & bustle of Ventura Blvd.
We had a reservation, sat down & waited 20 minutes for anyone to even acknowledge we were there. Finally the busboy brought us bread. Our waiter Shannon (at least that's what the receipt said) finally came over. We ordered a couple glasses of wine, and waters, felt he was a bit annoyed we only wanted tap water! He didn't even ask my son if he wanted anything to drink besides the water, and never did the entire meal!
We ordered a Caesar Salad & Calamari Fritti to start. We said we were sharing the Caesar, which the kitchen split & the waiter charged us for. He also asked if we were OK with anchovies, to which we replied we wanted them on the side, little did we know he was charging us for them too! The calamari was really yummy. The sauce had a slight spice to it, they were lightly breaded & fried perfectly. Tender and not greasy & most importantly they were hot when they came out!
For dinner, we ordered the Squid Ink Risotto, Gnocchi with 4 cheese sauce, and Lasagna. The squid ink risotto was absolutely terrific. It was hot, and flavorful (would be nice with more than just 1 leaf of basil as garnish). The Gnocchi was also flavorful & the sauce was decadent. The lasagna was meh.....the photos on Yelp of this dish looked amazing, but what came out from the kitchen was sauceless and dry with no cheese. My husband asked for more sauce, and received 2 ramekins of what looked like hamburger meat thrown into tomato sauce.....he then asked for just plain marinara sauce which was a little better. The flavor of the lasagna overall was just not good.
Before we ordered, my husband asked whether he should order a pizza or lasagna & the waiter actually told us about a pizza he had a couple nights ago at Medici.....that was weird! Not sure if he was new or not, but he simply could not make a recommendation of anything!
We will likely go back again, given two of the dishes were quite good, but will never order lasagna again, and we will hope we don't wind up with Shannon as our waiter!