Z Cucina di Spirito

Overall a good experience, but I expect something was up with our waiter. Husband and I went for our anniversary; it was about 7:30 on a Tuesday night and the restaurant was active but not busy. We were seated very promptly by the owner despite not having reservations (it was, after all, a Tuesday). But then we didn't see the waiter for about ten minutes. Someone stopped by and poured us water, still no waiter. Then the waiter popped by and told us he'd be right with us. Waited some more. When he did finally pay us some attention, he didn't read/explain the specials, nor bring us bread. He or the bar got my husband's cocktail order wrong (husband liked the wrong cocktail so we didn't say anything, but on top of everything else...) The waiter was fine after that but when I'm paying for a special occasion date, I'd like to receive our drinks before we had sat there for twenty minutes, our entrees a hour after we're seated, and to not have to ask for bread. The restaurant was not terribly busy and there were other waiters there. A table seated at the same time as us (of three older people) had several visits from their waiter by the time we got to meet ours. Maybe the waiter had another demanding table or maybe we were being ignored because we were a young couple (and therefore more likely to be cheap). I don't know. I just did NOT expect this after the repeated glowing reviews of the service. By far not the worst service I've experienced, but not appropriate for the price of the restaurant. Are my expectations too high, or something?

That said, the food was delicious, they split entrees for us very nicely, and the experience was overall good. The atmosphere was very pleasant, romantic yet upbeat. We got the appetizer taster plate, which was fantastic and a fun variety of different flavors and textures. We will be back, but only because I expect that our service this last time was a anomaly and not the norm.