Il Solito — Restaurant in Portland

Terrible service but OK food ... once we finally were served our meal after an incredibly long wait. It turns out our waitress forgot to place the order with the kitchen! Wow, she had one job ... Unbelievably poor service to get at a restaurant after a long day at work where we’d been too busy to eat most of the day. Around 7:30 pm after a business function and photo shoot at a location a few blocks away on Broadway, I thought I’d take my son to dinner at Pazzo, an old reliable standby, but forgot that it closed, and has been replaced by this sad excuse of a restaurant. We arrived at il Solito and ordered our dinner. But, after being served our lemonade (waitress brought the wrong drink for my son) and iced tea, the waitress never returned with our salad, entrees or even a plate of bread. Finally, after a 30+ minute wait without even a stop-by by the waitress I called her over to ask how long it would be until our meal would be ready. She looked confused, stopped wandering around the dining area and then apologized saying she forgot to order our meal. What?! We should have walked out then. Her manager came over and profusely apologized. Finally, our salads arrived .... followed by another long wait for our pasta. It was a joke. We just had to laugh at the situation — How Not To Run A Restaurant. Save yourself the aggravation and avoid this restaurant and go instead to Andina or any one of the many great restaurants in Portland that know how to serve a nice...

We've been visiting Portland occassionally for the last 15 years. We had always visited this restaurant in its previous incarnation; it was one of our favorites.

It reopened as Il Solito with the same executive chef, and I couldn't be more pleased!

The environment is wonderful. Cozy, romantic, cool. Very knowledgeable, attentive, yet unobtrusive staff.

Now to the best part - the food! We skipped appetizers in favor of dessert. For our main meal, my husband had the veal dish, and loved it. I chose the pork chop, which was served atop sweet potatoes, brussel sprout leaves, spinach, etc. The flavors were incredible! The pork chop was immense, a good 7 to 8 inches in diameter, and 1 1/2 inches thick. It was cooked perfectly! I ended up taking 2/3 of the chop home, which made a great sandwich, sliced thinly.

Try Il Solito. You...

Went there for my brothers birthday last week. Being a chef(not a cook) for years, I was not impressed at all. I have cooked Italian for over 9 years. My monkfish tasted like it came out of a can(think sardines), cannelini bean puree was bland and slightly gummy. I took 2 bites and sent it back. I never send food back. The fried mozzarella was...well fried mozzarella. The special app was whipped tellagio cheese/prosciutto/honey. It was okay at best, it was waaay too sweet. The Caesar salad was overly dressed and a bit on the soggy side. No one was impressed with any of the starters On a better note, a couple people had the sweet pea ravioli with lobster. They said it was really good. The service was attentive and nice. I won't be back, I will stick to a handful of Italian places that I know are...