Vianca R.
Yelp
No offense to people that have come here and given this place 5 stars, I'm sure at least 95% of you have never been to Italy, therefore believe this is how "authentic" Italian food tastes like. It doesn't. I've been to multiple cities in Italy and...well. This is not how they make their pasta dishes, and it's nowhere near these ridiculous prices with tiny portions. Let's just dive into the review, shall we?
1) the prices inconsistent with portions. everything is terribly expensive and you get tiny portions. A $17 salad is the size of a garden side salad, and honestly tastes as if you made it at home (I'm sure you can make the same exact one in your own house, saving $17 or buying all the ingredients for that price at Trader Joe's. LOL) we ordered the simple salad thinking we could split as an app between me, my husband, and his parents. oh no. I had 4 cherry tomatoes from the "salad" with bits of arugula and cheese. Then we ordered the burrata. Also tiny and expensive; came with more cherry tomatoes underneath than the burrata itself (they really like their uncooked cherry tomatoes around here). It tasted good, at least.
2) the pasta....Jesus Christ. one waitress tried teaching my mother in law what al dente pasta was (as if we didn't already know the difference) to try to explain why her ravioli dish was just straight up raw. It wasn't "al dente" ma'am, it was barely cooked. Her excuse was that the ravioli would break if they were cooked longer (red flag). That sounds more like an overstuffing of the pasta on behalf of the chef kind of problem than a problem a customer needs to be responsible for or made aware of to justify such hardened and inedible edges.
my husband enjoyed his tiny lasagna bolognese. No additional complaints there.
my father in law enjoyed his plate as well.
my plate...from the onset looks presentable and pretty. and the mere fact they make their pasta in house/from scratch is the only reason I'm giving away 2 stars. however there was nothing exciting palate-wise about it. I ordered the shrimp pasta, and I'm sure I make better pasta at home in terms of flavor. The noodles were not the typical noodles one expects with this kind of dish. With all due respect the texture and the shape (aside from being over cooked) looked AND tasted as if I were eating a ramen dish. Borderline the Cup noodle ramen taste. I've had better seafood-related pasta in other places, ESPECIALLY in Italy, but also within Miami in other restaurants. Nothing special, nothing new, almost $30 and came with teeny tiny bits of shrimp that looked as if they were already pre-digested by someone (yikes). The head of the langostino was a cute decorative touch, but had barely any meat. I guess they only placed it for decoration.
3) the customer service. when my mother in law didn't like her ravioli and asked for either the ravioli to be cooked longer or be served another platter, the waitress acted as if she was ignorant and initially made excuses which was low key disrespectful. She eventually took it back and brought her a fresh plate of ravioli in which you could taste the difference we mentioned earlier between raw/undercooked and al dente.
we asked for wine. The wine we wanted wasn't offered because "it wasn't cold", so she told us to order another one. Even though the second option she offered us was warm as well, and ended up bringing a bucket of ice to keep it cool. (We should have just had the wine we initially wanted, it was the same thing lol)
the waitress and the few other employees here had slight attitudes/faces of that they were dying to leave and rushing to offer us service, even though their restaurant was empty, aside from us there was only one other table of people.
there was not a single Italian as an employee or running the place witnessed. which is another red flag, because to be an "authentic" Italian place you should have at least one person that is actually Italian running the place. When my husband and I went to dōma for my birthday, that place is run and attended (waiters included) by actual Italians.
We quickly realized that on a Friday night for this place to be empty, is because the people that HAVE come to this place probably came once to try it out, felt disappointed, and decided to not come back (as will probably be in our case).
It's probably already a red flag in itself that they had availability without reservations within Wynwood.
Oh well. We tried and learned!