Casa Ludovico Fine Italian Dining — Restaurant in Florida

Not great. Not even good, just fair. Maybe, no, I am hard to impress when it comes to Italian cuisine. The restaurant itself is nice, comfortable with a nice relaxed ambiance. The service was good, it merited a 20% gratuity. The food itself though, sorry, at $150 for two with no alcohol. I expected to be impressed at least once. Not the case. We started with Grilled Octopus. Tender, nice char yet completely lacking in flavor. I had hoped a good, fragrant EVOO was on the plate, nope. A nice wedge of lemon was there, would have been better if it had been seeded. Instead we picked around the seeds. The Spinach and Portobello was similarly lackluster. Dressed with the same oil and nothing else as far as I could tell. The shaved parm did it's best to add some flavor, the portobellos were uncooked. Personally I feel a Portobellos flavor jumps when lightly sauted or grilled. Maybe deglace with a splash of Balsamic vinegar? We shared Linguini al Vongole. The house style is red, we were offered and chose to split the plate half red, half white. The white was fair, again more flavor was needed. It is a delicate dish if you want to taste the clams, this walked right on the edge, a solid almost. The red was simply overpowered with tomato. No nuance on that plate. We also had a Veal Chop with a Porcini brandy cream sauce. I was looking forward to that wonderful, earthy robust Porcini flavor. I didn't get it. Again, the dish was almost there, just not quite. The place was busy and it operated smoothly, the foh staff were attentive. I don't smoke and rarely drink so a clear palate was available. Unfortunately, I simply do not see $150 with no alcohol as fair value for...

Everything felt rushed all night long, but that wasn't the worst of it. Before he had even finished opening and poured the delicious bottle of Jordan Cabernet that we had, our server was already pressuring us to place our order. We asked him for some time to catch up with each other as we weren't on a time restraint.

When we did order, my husband was interested in the pasta special and asked the server if there was any meat in it. (My husband is a vegetarian.) He was told there wasn't, so he ordered it.

Once the food was delivered, there were bits of food in the pasta special that he didn't recognize, so he asked our server once more if there was meat in this dish. The server told him there wasn't and what he was seeing was mushrooms.

My husband took a couple bites, but wasn't convinced. It turns out this dish had sausage in it. We let our server assistant know we needed to speak with someone regarding the mishap and the server very quickly came over and replaced the meal. Meanwhile, the rest of the food at the table got cold as we waited for his fresh food and we ended up boxing up everything and taking it with us.

We were VERY disappointed that no one came over to discuss with us our experience and that my husband had just eaten meat for the first time in over three years.

Was this something that wasn't brought to anyone else's attention? Not only was the meal completely ruined, but for a vegetarian to be served meat and told twice that it isn't meat... it left a very sour taste in our mouths.

Thank you for taking the time to consider this experience when serving vegetarians in the future and understanding the importance of...

First of all, it pains me to write a bad review about a local place, but with how much they charge for what I got and the total evening being a bummer because of it, I need to share. I was not at all impressed by the food or waitstaff (valet was good and it was nicely decorated inside overall). This was my first time here, and based on the ratings I was expecting much better. The food was average and overpriced considering the overall lack of flavor and level of service. Mussels were meh (soggy and not much flavor), Octopus was actually really good (only thing that stood out), but the seafood over the linguini was tough and didn't have much flavor. The veal was ok, but not great for what they charge. I also got stuck at a teeny tiny table, with the next table way too close (seemed like an extra table you add on to get a few more seats), asked to move, but the waitress just shrugged and looked lost. Because the table was so small, every time they came over with food, they were moving my plate and everything on the table around to fit things on the table and were just completely in the way of the meal, the bread even got lost during one of the reshuffles. They didn't have fresh grated Parmesan cheese (they brought a bowl with a spoon and didn't want to leave it at the table). They didn't have enough wine menus and came to take ours back. Overall the expectations were high, but the reality of my meal and the service were just not up to expectations (or the price!) Seemed like they just wanted to turn our table and it definitely showed with the food and the service. They didn't even ask how the meal was, because I would...