Rafele — Restaurant in New York

Food: 5 stars. Everything was superb among the pasta, meat, seafood entrees, veggie side dishes, the flatbread as appetizer. Everything is perfectly prepared. You need have no doubts about anything you are ordering. Plus, all the dishes I saw going to other tables looked amazing.

Let me preface by saying that I left a 20% (rounded up) tip on the bill. I didn't stiff any labor despite what I have to say below.

Service: 1 star. Don't know the waiter's name. Tall, lanky man. Olive complexion, dark hair, moustache. Could look Italian or Middle Eastern. He sucked. Rude, unfriendly, inattentive, made us feel like we were putting him out for just being served. Overall, he was inaccessible during the 1 hr, 45 minutes we were there and very short with us the moments we did see him. Never checked in on us at all, not even for more drinks, which would've hiked up the bill as well as his tip. Ordering, my heavens, gawd forbid we ask him a question or he offer a friendly suggestion or comment. We didn't overstay our welcome, btw. Food just took awhile to come out, which is fine. We have no problem with that on a busy Saturday evening. In fact, we love hanging out in a place with such nice ambience, but I don't want you to think we overstayed our welcome. Let me add that my family and I go out of our way to be friendly, not merely courteous, to wait staff. The more we smiled and showed our excitement to be there; the cooler he got towards us. Also, our meals were given to us by a man who appeared rushed. All I did was ask for pepper. Took 5 minutes to get it, as I'm sitting there just staring at my food waiting, and I had to ask the food server again. Our waiter should've been offering us pepper, parmesan, etc, immediately upon delivery of our food. I'll admit that I got short with the food server upon asking for pepper again but I think I was just frustrated, by this point, with the service. I really hope the manager talks to that waiter (and identifies him correctly based on my description). Also, I don't know if this is really the policy but we wanted to order an appetizer when we were giving him our drink order. The waiter told us, very firmly, that the whole food order had to go in at the same time and that the drinks had to go in separately.

We had a delightful evening anyway because of the company we keep and the festive ambience on a Saturday night in a cool restaurant in the village. But, the service overall left a lot to be desired. Even when the crowd dwindled -- our meal was from 8:30-10:15 -- no one bothered checking on us for dessert or after-dinner drinks. This may be an exception to the rule at this place. At very least, I hope manager or...

Maybe I had higher hopes because of the high ratings. It was ok, but far from great. The bread was on the stale side. The spread that came with it was good, but rather different than I would have expected... Some marinated vegetable kind of stuff that was difficult to get on the bread and try to eat it without getting it all over. I ordered the calamari for an appetizer and it never came. The entrees came rather quickly, but no calamari. I asked the waitress and she seemed like it was a surprise to her that I even ordered it, but then remembered. She said the kitchen made the mistake, but I saw her go over to the computer and order it. Said it would be 5 minutes and it didn't get to me until I was done with my entree. The calamari was quite good though... But would have been better as an appetizer rather than a dessert. The spaghetti and seafood was tasty, but far from the best I've had. The clams in the shells were tiny and half of them didn't even have a clam inside the shell. The scallops were also tiny..the largest one was maybe the size of a dime and there were no more than 4 or 5 little scallops all together. Also, maybe it's not something you do in New York City, but why did they not serve a spoon with the long pasta to help twirl it. I've eaten pasta at some much nicer places and they had the spoon. The atmosphere was nice, but really noisy. I basically just looked at my dinner mate since I wasn't interested in yelling across the small table. Another thing that was not great was where the bathroom was. The door was literally right next to all the dining tables, and was only a one person bathroom. So you're pretty much announcing to everyone in the place that you're going to the bathroom. And then if someone's in there and you have to wait, you're standing there in the middle of dining room. It was just odd to me. The waitress did bring a few little cheesecake bites as a token of apology for the calamari mix up. Tasted good. I was trying to decide if it was made from scratch or from a mix, so it didn't wow me I guess. Take a chance on it, but don't be fooled by the overly...

We made a reservation (30 minutes ahead of time) for a weeknight on a Tuesday, but really we didn't need to do that upon seeing how many tables there were at the restaurant.

The Christmas decor inside was so cute! All the trees were lit up on the outside, and the decor was incredibly... classy, not just a few nutcrackers or cheesy posters hanging around. The service was mediocre, I'd say. It took awhile for the waiter to come around, so by the time he had arrived to ask about drinks we were ready to order food. The appetizers came out before the drinks were brought out... what?

The arancini was a little salty, but very tasty. We also had the melanzana (I'm not big on eggplant) and the mozzarella. I was disappointed to not see any burrata on the menu, especially after seeing someone who had ordered a fried burrata dish. The mozzarella was okay..... just not the same as burrata, the flavor is so much more mild and bland. The temperatures kind of threw me off, it came with roasted peppers which were lukewarm -- I'd prefer them to either be piping hot or cold, especially when the mozzarella was already lukewarm. This kind of turned me off from the dish and had me imagining that it had just been sitting out for awhile. For dinner, my sister and her friend split a margherita pizza, and I had ordered the tagliolini al funghi. The flavor of the pasta was absolutely delicious, clearly had some homemade noodles (cooked al dente). My only issue with it is that it was a tad oily, after I had finished the dish there was a pool of oil sitting in the bowl.

I probably wouldn't come back, just because I think you could probably find better Italian in NYC and there's so many other...