Worst Wannabe Italian Restaurant Ever!

Restaurant: Biaggi's

Service: Excellent.

Wine: Ok. (They had my favorite wine, so I can't really mark 'em down for that and the selection of others was pretty good. Not too pricey either.)

Bread: Good/Ok. (The garlic bread was actually focaccia and rather excellent. There just wasn't enough of it in my opinion. The remainder of the bread basket was made up of what was untoasted bread for bruchetta. Not terribly tasty or exciting.)

Food: Terrible. I had a ceasar salad, the fettuccini with lobster, and a slice of their lemon tower cake.

The ceasar salad was passable at best. I don't know what is up with their house ceasar dressing but the flavor of anchovies overpowered the rest of the dressing. It would have almost been alright if it wasn't for the fact that their home made croutons consisted of toasted hunks of bread too big to bite easily and too hard to spear with a fork. On the plus side of the column, the lettuce wasn't wilted and they did put a generous serving of grated parmesan on top.

The fettuccini with lobster... well, that was a disaster of a mistake for me to order. One thing that I am is a pasta fanatic. I really do love well prepaired pasta and I enjoy trying new pasta dishes. I've had fettuccini before in various different dishes. Last I checked, it wasn't supposed to be like eating half dried out glue or a congealed block on the plate. The lobster... well, if I have food poisioning within the next 48 hours, we'll know the cause of it. I'm fairly sure that they use pre-cooked lobster, however. It was cold in the middle of the large peices and on the whole it was like eating torn up bits of a wet sponge that had been used to wash dishes that were once in contact with some sort of seafood.

The only redeeming part of this dish was the mushrooms tasted like mushrooms. They didn't go so far as to use the portabella mushrooms or even the baby 'bella ones. Nope, these were sauteed cheapie generic white mushrooms. I think, however, the most disappointing part of the dish was the alfredo sauce. Alfreado sauce is supposed to have some vauge resembelance of flavor, isn't it? This stuff didn't have any hint of flavor at all. The sauce was incredibly thin and I suspect not properly made to begin with. I figure this is another pre-cooked item and they probably poured it out of a jar. Even so, if I wanted my sauce to be thin, I'd just have told them to drizzel cream over it all. That'd even be thicker then the sauce that I had on my pasta, which was cold when the plate came out.

The lemon tower cake, thank the gods, wasn't a complete loss after the main entree of the night. The frosting was a butter cream frosting with far too much butter in it with an ungodly amount of whipped cream on the side. The cake itself, however, was excellent. This almost made up for the failure that was the rest of the meal. I suppose I was spoiled as a child by my Great-Aunt Eileen and her cakes. When you have real Italian lemon cake, however, you can't go back to this wet-sponge sawdust flavored monstrosity that is generally supposed to pass for an Italian lemon cake.

I did have a little demitasse of expresso. I was plesantly surprised that they got that right as well.

Seriously, it took everything I had in me not to demand that the manager bring out the cook so that I could upbraid both of them. The presentation of the food was lacking. This was compounded by the fact that it was generally unplatable. I think the only saving grace of the night was the excellent service of the wait staff. They were prompt and courteous. We left a generous tip for that because we really appreciated it. It made what could have been a nightmarish experience bearable.

Now, one may be wondering why I'd upbraid the manager and the cook. The manager would get it because I'm fairly sure the man would have taken offense to my reaction to the food. And I know the cook would have been embaressed and offended when I plainly laid out just how everything was screwed up. This place bragged that they had an excellent cook. They failed to back up that claim. When a farm girl from the middle of nowhere in Upstate NY knows how to make a better veal parmesan then a graduate of a culinary insitute, I think it's appropriate to light a few fires under a few asses.

I didn't, however, because I didn't want to embaress my husband as we were out to celebrate his birthday. The poor man was in the same boat I was in and too polite to rake 'em over the open coals either. At least his cup of coffee was decent and his chocolate cake was good.