Crystal M.
Yelp
Our first time in.
Trattoria Pina is hyped and people have been coming for many many years to enjoy the family establishment, so you will most likely wait for your table- like we did- 45ish minutes past our reservation time we were finally seated (I was starving and I did enjoy their house focaccia bread).
It was a colder night for waiting at the tables outside, so the small front door waiting area was overwhelmingly packed with people, however the servers and staff know what they're doing and do it well... they flipped tables and stayed on top of it all.
My meal was just ok- spicy sausage fettuccine with gorgonzola sauce but it seemed to be more of a butter/cream sauce (sad to say but Olive Garden's is better and we hardly ever eat there)... I reheated leftovers the next day and my noodles were swimming in a pool of butter.
Other things at the table: grilled veggie app- yum but needs more goat cheese plated, shrimp/artichoke/polenta app- good but swimming in butter and salt, Caesar- which we paid an extra $5 for (each!) had the hardest croutons ever and way too many salty sardines on top (*this is a skip unless we just caught a really off night for their Caesar; others at the table had the house salad and it looked great- more personality than the Caesar for sure), chicken parm/eggplant parm/Italian marinara trio- all pretty delicious but marinara is on the sweeter side.
We had two birthdays at the table we were celebrating- I mentioned when making the reservation and was told they do a fun birthday thing; they brought out the desserts which weren't as impressive as I wanted and they were out of the one we wanted (limoncello something or other) so we opted for a cannoli... our server put one candle in the cannoli and took it off our bill. I wouldn't call it "special" but it was nice and he was great, no doubt.
There were 4 of us- we did have 2 bottles of wine and our bill was around $300; for the price point I just really wanted and expected a 4 or 5 star experience, this just wasn't one.
*Maybe skip ordering a bottle of wine- we saw that they pour their wine by the glass to the very top, so not sure a bottle is necessary.
This place is great for it's regulars (there are many- you can tell in just one visit), it's been around for a long time, it's beautiful inside and out, might be good for special occasions.... unfortunately the wait and the few other things really put a damper on this dinner out for us, which is why I went into such detail here in Yelp; maybe I came in with too high of expectations.
Not sure we'll be back.