Finestra Restaurant — Restaurant in New York

I wanted to love this restaurant, but I just can't bring myself to do it. Everything about this restaurant is ABSOLUTELY PERFECT except for one thing: the food!

Decor and ambiance? Perfect! It's upscale Italian, and I don't mean a plastic-over-the-furniture kind of way. I mean in a super-quaint / cute Billy Joel kind of way. I love walking in. It's festive, cheery and upscale. Service? It couldn't get any better. The waitstaff is precisely what you want in an upscale place: attentive without hovering. I haven't been to a restaurant with this good service in many months!

Food? Awful. Now here's the thing. Most people are easily fooled. I once read "Donald Trump is a poor person's vision of what rich people are like." If you look great, and act great, obviously the food is going to be great, right? Most people would say no, and then go ahead and trick themselves into believing substandard food is the cat's meow. They know better in their head, but when it comes time to eat, they lose sight of what's intellectually "obvious":

Sadly, this is the state of affairs at Finestra.

Let me just say this. If Finestra ever got its act together, food-wise, it might become one of my favorite places to eat. However, as it stands, the restaurant charges exorbitant prices for very low quality ingredients that are cooked poorly. I'm more than happy to pay $25 for a plate of pasta, as long as it's good pasta. The prices at Finestra are commensurate with its ambiance and service, but NOT its food.

Table bread: A The crust was very hard and sour; the bread interior was soft and delicious. The only way this bread could've been better is if it had been warm from being freshly baked.

Hot Antipasto for Two: B- Mussels weren't fresh; they were slightly fishy. The bread stuffing on the baked clams was slightly dry (you should drizzle olive oil on them to prevent the bread crumbs from drying out). Additionally, I felt that the bread crumb stuffing could've been seasoned a little bit more aggressively. It lacked flavor. the eggplant was pretty good. Overall the dish needed to be wetter: it could've used a drizzle of olive oil and / or more red sauce. When people order this kind of food, what they're really after is dipping bread into the sauce afterwards. There wasn't enough wetness for that sort of thing.

Fettuccine Meatballs: C+ For starters, the fettuccine was under-cooked. Yes, it's a fine line between under-cooked and al dente, however, for $20+ I expect an Italian cuisine chef to have mastered that nuance!!! I would like to comment on the sauce, however, unfortunately, there simply wasn't enough of it for me to really taste it. There was enough sauce to color the dish, but not enough to make an impact on the dish. I couldn't even tell you if it were sweet or savory. There simply wasn't enough of it. I know, I know... my fault for not asking for more. It's true. But we were in a rush.

However, the saddest part was the meatballs. Every bite of the meatballs had gristle -- every single bite! I expect this from a pizzeria, not from a $20+/plate Italian restaurant! In fact, I offer a challenge to the manager who will undoubtedly respond to this review. Instead of thanking me for my feedback, why don't you sit down with a meatball -- just one meatball -- and chew it? I mean, really evaluate what you're eating. If your meatball is anything like mine, each bite will contain a bit of...

What a disappointment. Let me preface this by saying that the service and the wait staff are absolutely AMAZING. I can’t say enough about how great the service was and how this is a review about the food. The service was so good, I almost didn’t write this.

That said, the food was a complete disappointment. I’ve lived in the area for years now and have always read about how good the food is supposed to be here, but never made it in until last night.

Let’s start with the positive (aside from the service) - the polenta was good. Not great, but good. And the rest of the food came out piping hot, so there’s that. All downhill from there.

My wife and I decided to split a pasta and chicken parm because it was our first time there and you can usually gauge a place by how well they do such simple dishes.

The chicken was wayyyy over cooked to the point that there was zero moisture left in it - it was almost as if it were deep-fried it was so over cooked. The pasta that came with the chicken parm was very al dente (which I normally like), but seemed like it was out of a box and possibly a bit old.

For the pasta dish, we ordered the pappardelle with meat sauce. The pasta itself was better than what came with the chicken, and I can believe that it’s actually homemade. The sauce was ok at best, but nothing great.

The prices were very high for the quality of food. If the prices weren’t so high, I’d say this could be a great spot to go for a decent meal on the cheap. But, given that you’re in NYC and have an almost endless list of great Italian restaurants to choose from...this place misses the mark. Which is disappointing to me because I REALLY wanted it to be good and hope that they can improve because the staff is great and it really is a lovely...

EDIT: We did let the server know that the steak was different from what we had last time. That’s what prompted me to ask her if you guys had changed chefs. Because if you did it would make sense why the quality was different for the steaks but she said it's the same chef for over 20 years. We were also visibly displeased but nothing was done about the situation at the time. Also, what’s your email to discuss this privately?

Very inconsistent. The first time we went was amazing. This was a month ago. We had the best server. He was so good we tipped $50. We probably should’ve tipped more. The steak was cooked to PERFECTION. So I decided to take my mom here for her birthday. Big mistake. The steak was chewy this time. Tasted like steak you’d get from outback or applebees. Actual cardboard with pink sauce. So we asked if they changed chefs. But they said they didnt. It was horrible but we ate half of it anyway because we were starving. We were thinking about this food all day and we needed something in our system. We made it known to the server (who was a different server this time). She didn’t do anything about it. Just a free dessert which didn’t feel special because the server the first time we went gave us dessert for free even though we made no complaints the last time. He was simply being nice. So this time it meant nothing. It was very disappointing because I really wanted my mom to try the same amazing steak i had the first time. And it sucks that it was her birthday and she couldn’t even brag about the food. So now i have to take her somewhere else to make up for it. Just a very disappointing experience this...