after dinner sneeze

t says: I had the opportunity to go to Davio’s this week … for free! It was a work-related event with a large group of people. In retrospect, I’m thankful that I didn’t have to pay anything for it – but I am sad that someone had to pay for it …

It’s actually not worth a full-on review …

Props: The main dining area looked nice – fairly upscale. We were seated in a separate dining room on the penthouse floor with beautiful views of the city.

Slops: The server made it very apparent that he was not working for a tip (we had a large group, so tip was included) – he was short on words, spared no pleasantries, and sounded as if he had drawn the short straw for the night by having to wait on us. Suck it up, dude. There was a limited menu that featured a salad (which was a sad, plain, boring plate of greens and cucumber), a pasta, and tiramisu. The pasta was supposed to include “braised veal, beef, and ____ bolognese” (I forgot the third meat). Yea – it was totally ground hamburger meat – no taste of veal whatsoever, and not a single shred of actual meat (e.g. had they actually braised a hunk of meat). While I’m sure what they did was technically a braise, I’d say that the use of such a word is misleading when talking about the preparation of ground meat as it is akin to me saying that I poached the Wegmans brand spaghetti that I made for dinner tonight. Fortunately, the tiramisu tasted like tiramisu – woohoo – but it still gets listed under slops because the strawberries they coupled it with were mouth-puckeringly sour (like unripe sour).

While I’m sure that I might get flamed for flaming Davio’s, especially when I didn’t have any of the steak at a “Northern Italian steakhouse”, I stand by my comments and final judgement. I still feel that any Italian restaurant needs to have good pasta – is it not one of the courses that you eat in Italy regardless of whatever else you’re eating that night? I mean – I could be wrong (I’m no Italian), but silly me – I thought pasta might be an Italian staple. And what better way to compare Italian cookery among restaurants than to look at the ever-so-simple pasta bolognese?