Eataly - Short Hills — Attraction in Millburn

This place was a huge waste of time and money. I'm going to be speaking strictly about the restaurant dining experience

Having eaten at the Eataly in Flat Iron I was pretty excited to have one close to home in Short Hills. This experience has NOTHING in common. I remember more or less enjoying my Flat Iron meal but this time. It was a ridiculous disappointment.

Let's start off with the positive. The texture of the pasta was good. The insalata caprese was fine.

Great. Done.

Let's start at the beginning, we were sat rather promptly but right there is where the problems began. Our server took something like ten minutes to great the table. I don't strictly blame her, she looked VERY busy, but I don't know WHAT other actions she was preoccupied with. The restaurant isn't very large and she would disappear a lot and when I counted up it looked like she only had 3 tables. She could have been covering another section in another part of the restaurant, but that falls on management.

I've worked in restaurants myself and it felt like our server was deeply busy but I couldn't think of a logical reason why.

We ordered the Bruschetta and the aforementioned Insalata Caprese. The Bruschetta was unbaked. Bland. My wife didn't enjoy it but we were quite hungry. I was actually pleased with the Insalata Caprese, it didn't have any balsamic vinaigrette but that might just be the style and it tasted good so I didn't mind.

For the entrees we ordered the Cacio e Pepe and the Carbonara, which was the special of the day.

I think the thing that makes me a great is that this place is an egregious money grab. The portions are small, and anything that costs money you can tell they have cut back on. Let's start with the Cacio Pepe. For one it had no pepper. No black pepper? That's in the name. It was way too runny of a sauce, which again could be the style, but beyond that I had to ask for more pepper.

The Carbonara was a total disaster. Carbonara is one of my favorite dishes and 90% of Italian restaurants don't make it right. It's only a few ingredients: Guanciale (cured pork cheek), egg (yolk and white) pasta, black pepper, and Pecorino Romano.

No cream. It feels like 90% of American Italian restaurants get this wrong. However the picture for the Carbonara, the sauce was a rich yellow tinted sauce that clung beautifully onto the pasta, a generous heap of pecorino Romano, and some lovely crisped pieces of guanciale sprinkled grnerously on top. What I got has no identifiable black pepper, very VERY little pasta, and so little Guanciale. I felt like I had been conned. The sauce was incredibly runny.

All in all we spent over 120 when you include the tip. When you literally have cheesecake factory nearby, there is zero reason to waste over twice the money for portions that felt like theft.

I fully understand restaurants live on extra thin margins. I worked in restaurants for over a decade. But they shouldn't FEEL like they are trying so hard to cut corners. These prices are crazy and the product is worse than every competitor which is half the price and double the portion size.

All in all, the experience was a mess - they got us good. Very successful truck, ya'll. I won't be back and I'll definitely recommend people away...

Wow, what a disappointing and lousy experience. I was looking forward to dining at Eataly for an impromptu dinner as approximately 10-13 years ago, Eataly in the Flatiron or World Trade Center were remarkable. The selection was fantastic, the staff was well versed on the offerings, and the restaurants were exquisite. The pizza and pasta restaurant in the Flatiron was a coveted spot; I would drive over an hour, wait however long for a table, and enjoyed beautiful pizzas and pastas with divine glasses of wine that really sang. I anticipated having a similar experience at Short Hills and was really eager but as soon as the appetizer came out, I realized that I was paying for the brand's once-good reputation, but the food was awful, unpalatable, and trash. To start, I had a tough time selecting a wine and my server had no idea where to point me. The by-the-glass and bottle options that I once looked forward to at Eataly Flatiron were nowhere to be found on the menu. I ordered the chianti but after I was poured a taste, rejected the wine and settled on a Montepulciano. My husband ordered a pinot noir which was quite literally disgusting. We ordered the burrata con caponata for a starter and while the burrata was merely ok, the caponata was very disappointing. It was bland and did not pair well with the burrata at all. We wish we sent it back but since our server was kind, we did not want to create unnecessary issues for him. We also ordered two pastas: the Tonnarelli Cacio e Pepe and the Ravioli Di Zucca. I was flabbergasted by both pastas-- they competed with one another for being more awful than the other. The cacio e pepe of the old Eataly was beautiful; there was thick, al dente, beautiful pasta with a decadent creamy cacio e pepe sauce-- the pepper was fragrant, robust, and a perfect compliment. We received a limp, awful, greasy, bowl of thin pasta with lesser quality cheese and NO PEPPER! I had to request that the server manually grind pepper onto the pasta, and even still, the dish was underwhelming beyond measure. The ravioli was soggy, pathetic, and definitely a 0 out of 10. The ONLY redeeming part of the meal was the pizza, the Margherita Verace TSG. If it wasn't for the pizza, I would have rated this spot -3 stars, but the dough was solid, the sauce was fine, the basil was fragrant, and it was cooked well. A manager came around to ask how the food was but saw that I was sitting there with a mouth filled with food, unable to do anything but nod, so I could never share how awful our experience was. We left the restaurant rapidly (when we would usually shop around after our meal), grabbed a quick affogato (which was lovely) on our way out, and vowed never to spend a nickel at this establishment again. I would have preferred the Olive Garden, and I quite loathe the...

I 1st want to say I was so looking forward to this… I have a 3 year old so really don’t get to go out and enjoy a leisurely meal.. so I ordered Uber Eats- the speedy delivery was close to the best part of this experience. For background - I’m 1/2 Southern Italian, grew up in an Italian neighborhood, and have been to Italy, am an excellent cook & baker & eat out allot. Since it was my 1st time ordering I got a wide variety : Pasta Norma, Spinach ravioli, sfincione , Arancini, fried potato, sandwich, pistachio cornetto, pistachio tiramisu, and a 5 cheese slice of pizza ($9.50?!!). Be aware the pasta serving sizes are like in Italy (much smaller than what we typical serve here ). Now the pasta Norma - a big zero for me, not enough sauce , not enough flavor, almost no eggplant and so little ricotta salata on top, and the pasta was moosh… didn’t even taste like the pasta water had been salted. Awful! Then the ravioli type thing - not cooked long enough it was beyond al dente with hard edges and no visible sauce …this gets a 1 for trying. The sfincione was supposed to have olive capers anchovy and tomato with onion it was laughable - about a half teaspoon of tomato colored sauce on the whole thing and a piece of onion … it was nice and puffy at least, the arancini god awful no flavor , the rice was hard yet sticky and they were burned to a dark dark brown the peas inside were crispy just disgusting (my dog would turn this down). Next the fried potatoes these are OK and came with the dipping sauce. The car ride didn’t help him as they were No longer crispy, but at least it tasted pretty good. The five cheese slice was very good with corn milk on the crust. However, the Gorgonzola cheese is when it was a touch overpowering.. The sandwich so far was the stand out very very good. Finally, the desserts I was very much looking forward to the pistachio tiramisu unfortunately, they didn’t put it in my order And didn’t refund me for it either later Uber eats actually refunded me so I can’t comment as whether it’s actually good… I ordered a pistachio Cornetto but instead they gave me plain - it was edible but I wouldn’t seek it out . Finally, I ordered a cannoli. There is a choice of chocolate Shell or regular - I opted for the chocolate shell with the raspberry in the cannoli cream made with cows milk instead, I got a regular cannoli shell with a couple pistachios on it It was one of the two better things that I ordered. Overall, this is a lot of money for complete disappointment. I remember when Mario Batali and Lidia were a part of this and I had been to their fabulous delicious restaurants… let me just say there is not a “taste” of them...