Where to start? The restaurant is nicely decorated but quite loud. Not the worst thing about this place. Our waiter started out very cheery and upbeat.

We were seated at 8:15, slightly later than our 8pm reservation but this happens. It took some to get our first drinks only to have our waiter forget to order wife’s drink. Cue our waiter disappearing for 15 min. He comes around again and gets our full order and was going to stagger them coming out. Great right? Cue yet another disappearing act.

He flies by again with promises that our appetizer would be out in 5 minutes and he would bring bread.

He then proceeded to take care of the tables to the left and right, chatting wonderfully with them. Does a fly by…no bread .

55 minutes after being seated we had bread! Our appetizer followed in short order, a meatball. It looked great, it smelled great. It was not great. The sauce had some flavor but the meatball had none and cried wee, wee, wee all the way to a sad place in our bellies.

Salads came out a bit later. I had the Ceaser, my wife had the pastatini soup. My salad was average, fairly heavy with the dressing but edible. The pastatini….lets dive in. Pastatini soup, also known as Italian penicillin, is usually a very flavorful soup with tiny round noodles. I’m not sure why they made this with an anemic stock, large chunks of chicken, and mini ziti noodles but that’s what we got.

Cue another long wait for dinner, but hey, we had some food in us so all is…okay.

Dinner comes, 3 out 4 entrees are fine. I had the carrot risotto with a 4 oz filet, ordered med-rare. The risotto was fine with an interesting cheese but I liked it. The steak was cooked blue. Rarer than rare. Cold to the touch. Clearly not medium rare.

I managed to snare our waiter (Matt or Matthew) and let him know about my issues. He promptly takes my plate, with my fork in it, to correct it. Two minutes later it’s out and should be great according to our waiter. The aforementioned blue rare meat was now grey. Wet grey lumps of still very rare filet.

I am no expert, but I’ve worked in restaurants and I know what microwaved meat looks like. Grey wet lumps or meat. I raise my objection to Matt again only to be told “Sir, we don’t have a microwave in our kitchen.”

Okay, this magically turned grey and was back to my table in two minutes. No indication it ever touched the grill. Oh, and when it came back it was the same dish, partially eaten risotto, with my original fork planted firmly in it.

I’ve been to enough fine dining establishments. This was not my first time. I’ve had other restaurants under or over cook a steak. It happens. Each and every other time this has occurred a new steak or at least a recooked steak came out, new plate, fresh side, new fork.

Our second round of drinks I reordered my original - the floating petal I think. First one was fantastic (if you do go here, order it), but the second one tasted like gin and grapefruit.

At this point I’ve had it. I send my entree back and just tell him to take it off the bill and I’m fine. No need to do the entree shuffle again.

I head up front to speak to a manager about how long we have waited for our various courses, the food issue, etc. Folks let me tell you, she was the one redeeming experience at this establishment. She listened, she apologized, and she said we will come up with a plan. And she did. She comped all 4 of entrees even though we said we were fine with just mine coming off. After all, that was the only entree that failed. She would not hear it. She was very concerned with our experience and wanted to make it so right that would try again. I don’t recall her name but she deserves every penny she earns and more. I hope she moves on to a restaurant that she can be proud of.

Our waiter? Near silence. No apology. Nothing said to even validate the experience we just had. Matt, if you read this, please find another profession. This is not for you.

You can try this place but there are many other restaurants in this area that deserve your time and money.