Pomegranate Martini
Cantaloupe Martini
Braciolette Di Pollo (chicken stuffed with parma cotto and mozzarella baked with a butter wine sauce) served with ziti in tomato sauce.
Well this is a first for Boyled Dinner, this is my first genuinely bad review.
This was a night out with some friends (faculty of Malden High School "Go Golden Tornados") and we had a reservation for 7 people at 7:00. Well they kept us waiting upstairs for 10-15 minutes even though i believe our table was waiting for us downstairs since we arrived. They had no host or hostess that seemed like they were taking care of people, and in fact when we went downstairs we had to seat ourselves. They dropped off 1 basket of bread for 7 people, and by the time person number 4 took a piece there was essentialy just some large crumbs left. We had to ask for more ourselves. Then after waiting for about 20 minutes, our waiter who was at a different table, shouted over he would be right with us (and he overused the word Ok, which annoyed me..ok, ok ,ok). We were wondering what type of cocktails they offered, so i had to go up to the bar to get a drink menu as they had none on the tables. By the time the waiter finally came to us for a drink order, we had been sitting there for 45 minutes, with just the basket of bread and some water. We asked if we could put in both the dinner and drink menu together, since we didn;t want to wait too much longer to order food.
WELL, our waiter decided at this time to have a bit of a breakdown. NO ! I cannot take your dinner order , i don't have time. I will take your drinks now, THEN i must go take the order of the table next to you, THEN i must bring out the food for the people behind you, and i have to bring that table their check. I cannot take your order! Its a madhouse i am just 1 man ! Ummmm hun, in the time it took you to give us your life story, you actually could have written down our order.
So he said, i will get someone who can take both from you, and then he stormed away.
We did bond with the table of 4 next to us after his outburst, so that was fun.
So a few minutes later a nice young woman showed up and gave us the dinner specials, and took our drink and dinner order. Not quite sure what magical gift she had that our other first waiter couldn't quite master.
I had 2 cocktails, a cantaloupe martini (fabulous) and later a pomegranate martini (STRONG).
For my entree i had the Braciolette Di Pollo. I must say i had quite high hopes for this meal, but i feel like it was ready long before i received it and when i got it, the cheese which should have been softer, was stringy and warm. The butter sauce had no flavor, and the ziti was luke warm. For $16.99 i expect better. But i feel 3 of my dining companions got the worse deal in terms of value of a meal. They paid $27 for a butternut squash rizzoto with 3!! scallops...3!!! That to me was outrageous. But i believe they did enjoy the flavor of the meal.
There was no apology (at least not a legitimate one from management), they did bring us a plate of some Italian cookies (these were as dry as anything i have ever eaten, more of an insult than an apology).
Normally i don't give up on an establishment after one bad meal, but this just had nothing redeeming to make me want to go back and risk getting more of this kind of service.
So for my money, there are better eating establishments to try for great Italian food.
Have a good night and a better meal than what i had.
Kevin M.Boyle
Excellent review - my experience paralleled Kevin's!
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