Last Saturday night, the culinary rat pack descended upon Natalino’s on Chicago Avenue. They’ve been in the space a little over two years (certainly enough time to work out the kinks). We had a party of 10 during Valentines Day weekend (which typically is a busy time). This was no exception – the house was full.
Before I go into the rant on this evening, let’s be clear. The intention of my blog is to find great dishes. I am not looking for the bad dish or restaurant scenario – there are plenty of yelper’s out there for that purpose. However, I am making an exception because this evening was so bad I felt it was important to write about it.
We had an 8 pm reservation and all parties were present and accounted for. We waited a half hour to be seated and then another half hour before anyone showed up at our table. We were hungry and wanted a cocktail. When our server showed up, she spread her cheery energy and apologized for the delay. We felt a little better. Then the wine bottles showed up, but there were no glasses and no opener. This just started an evening that quickly went further down hill.
Fellow diner Coleen weighs in on the “welcome” experience: “Then to wait such an excessively long time to even be acknowledged- missing wine glasses missing plates and silverware missing chairs that we had to get ourselves Then to be given not enough menus and be told that he couldn’t get us drinks because he wasn’t our server Next on to our over bubbly waitress. Not that I’m not saying she was making the best of a bad situation but thank you Dori… I did find her obnoxious also. I really didn’t need to know she is going thru a divorce and that she still gets along with her ex or how many children she has …”
Although we are all real food lovers (and some of us are thin the business), I believe that typically, we are full of optimism and show up with an open attitude. And, throughout this long, painful evening – we kept saying “oh, the next round of food will be better.” And, it just kept getting worse.
I think we were so ravenous that when it came to ordering appetizers we could not stop. I am pretty sure we ordered almost everything: baked clams, mussels, eggplant, sausages with peppers, stuffed pepper, calamari two ways, Caesar salad. Every single dish was bad except the stuffed pepper. The calamari was cold and soggy (they forgot to bring us the second calamari). The Caesar salad was ordered without croutons. It came with croutons. We took it back, it came out without croutons, but the salad was mushy and the dressing was tasteless.
Giles went upstairs to speak to the manager. A few minutes later, the chef came downstairs. He appeared defeated, dirty and disheveled. He said the economy was bad; it was dead during the week, and hard to get people to work when the restaurant was busy. He took no responsibility for the situation. He claimed he would rise above all of this and ensured us that our entrée’s would be well prepared. And, we wanted to believe him!
This guy is part owner here. I think of executive chefs as CEO’s of their kitchens. They need to take responsibility and leadership roles – source the best ingredients and have good staff cooking. Put love in the food, serve it hot (or appropriately) and make sure it looks decent. None of that occurred. Why was he in charge?
The entrée’s came out – he was missing mine and Brian’s. They did not acknowledge this. And, our food did not come out for another 10 minutes. Out of ten dishes – two were edible: the baked chicken (hard to screw that up), and the veal saltimbocca. My risotto was overcooked. Giles seafood was overcooked. One of the pasta dishes did not yet make it to al dente.
We brought the chef back down. We showed him the problems with each dish. At one point, he yelled back at an employee who was with him (in front of all of us): “You tell _____, if he ever puts out a dish like this again, he’s fired.” The chef told us the only dish he made was the saltimbocca. So, even though he promised to watch over our dishes and take care of this, he did not even look at what he was putting out for us.
Am I in a Reality TV program here? Where is Gordon Ramsey?
He said his dessert would be second to none. It was not edible. He placed mango and banana on a plate doused in some type of “bananas foster sauce”, and placed a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle. They used some type of butane lighter NOT to heat the fruit. It was really just there to soak the fruit with the foul smell of fuel.
We did not bother bringing the chef down after the fuel infused dessert. We know the economy ruined our dessert. Yeah – that was it!
