George's Little Rock — Restaurant in Little Rock

First things first, coming from Austin, TX, I had my doubts about finding good places to eat. But to my surprise, George's just became my new number one restaurant in Little Rock. Second is probably Cypress Social.

My wife and I started with the "what happens in Bangkok" drink and the "Study Abroad" drink. The study abroad drink's mint and bourbon was amazing.

Next we got the homemade garlic focaccia. It was such a perfect crisp and soft melody. The olive and garlic oil oozes out when you squeeze and tear a piece off.

Thereafter, Caesar salad! The Caesar salad was light and had subtle notes of sweetness. It had a nice aftertaste of lemon. It was a super well balanced salad!

Next round of drinks, I asked for a surprise and got the Kavanaugh. My wife got the study abroad again. The drink was a weird sour tasting drink. It was like the sour patch of drinks. First sour then sweet. Just not my type of drink.

From there we got the spicy vodka rigatoni with the homemade meatballs. At first glance it doesn't look like a lot of food, but the richness in the flavors of the sauce and meatballs makes it super filling.

Lastly, we topped the night off with some cheesecake with a strawberry glaze. It was the perfect end to the night. The cheesecake was light and creamy.

Other things that I liked about the restaurant, the attention to detail! The acoustics are fantastic. For me and my wife, it felt like it was just us in the room with the sound of people talking in the background. Imagine playing background sounds on your Google home at a volume of 3 out of 10. I don't know how they did it, but if I could give it an extra star for that alone I would.

All in...

Got a Saturday night dinner reservation a few hours before. Ambiance was wonderful and the restaurant was beautiful! Our server was great, very friendly and attentive. It seemed like the type of place with amazing food but unfortunately that part fell short. The drinks were somewhat expensive and the pepperberry spritz was good but not for the price. The food was not bad but underwhelming for the price for sure. I've been to similar caliber Italian restaurants in major cities across the US at the same price point but paid for homemade pastas and overall better food. Caesar salad was good but nothing special for $11. I hate paying for bread and while not worth $8 their bread was very good. Chicken parm was good but the spaghetti and sauce were standard. The rigatoni alla vodka was truly disappointing. The sauce didn't have much flavor besides "spicy" but the rigatoni itself was bad. First off they were giant, so it was very awkward to eat, and the pasta was of poor quality- it was cooked to a hard al dente yet half of my noodles fell into pieces. Another note, they had a lot of "market and seasonal" items without description or prices listed anywhere and our server did not elaborate on them. A printed special menu with details of each item would be helpful so guests don't have to ask for every detail. Again for the type of restaurant and the prices they charge I expected homemade pastas or at least better than what I got. I hate to say it because everyone was so nice and the restaurant...

We really wanted to love George’s - we’d been looking forward to our visit - and I’m hoping it was just an “off” night. We had a reservation for 5:00pm and were promptly escorted to our table. From there on, waiting was the theme of the meal. We waited 10+ minutes for our server to greet us and take our drink order, and from there on the pace of service was incredibly slow, whether for water refills, drink refills, or our meals. We’d have ordered at least one more round of drinks - there was a wine we wanted to try - if we’d had the opportunity to order them. The focaccia was fantastic, as were the garlic Parmesan fries. We ordered the Osso Bucco (delicious) and the Fettuccini Alfredo with shrimp added (not great and needed more flavor) as entrees. When they were first brought out, we questioned that there was no shrimp on the pasta, and the server said it was supposed to be added so she’d get it fixed; she then came back and said that, actually, we were brought the wrong food and neither entree was ours so she’d take them both and come back with our meal. Early in the meal, we mentioned to our server that our table was wobbling (enough to knock drinks over), and she stated “oh yeah, this table does that.” She later told us that she had someone coming by to fix the table (something to do with a piece on the bottom coming out), but that never happened.

Overall, while we liked a few of the things we ate, this wouldn’t be high on our...