You Would Think I Would Learn

There is a new Italian restaurant in town that took over the spot where a Chinese place was for the longest time. In between these two it was a Thai place, but for less than a year. The nice thing about this location is it is in a shopping center that is walkable for us, a little less than a mile away from home.

Now that they have been open for a little over a month and the crowds have died down, we went there for dinner tonight. We didn’t walk, but maybe next time. And the next time will be at least another month or more away though, because they still haven’t worked out all the kinks.

The hostess offered us a table, but there were several empty booths and we requested one. This stopped her in her tracks. I’m sure she was trying to steer us towards the tables to be fair about wait staff distribution, but she was literally paralyzed, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. A waiter was there and whispered something to her and then seated us at one of the booths. After not too long our waiter arrived and took our drink order, two waters. As we usually do, we didn’t let him get away, and gave him our dinner order right then as well. Two small garden salads and a 14″ supreme pizza. He seemed in a rush. After he left us he took a pizza order from the table behind us and then there was a big gap. No waters. The guy who seated us noticed and asked if we had ordered drinks and we replied positively, he rushed off too. About a minute later our waiter arrived with the glasses of water and remarked about the sloooow ice machine.

I counted 6 waiters or waitresses and about 35 diners, not too bad a ratio, but all of the wait staff seemed to be in a big hurry when they moved and it still seemed that not a lot was getting done fast. Our salads arrived and they were the right size for a small and had a nice mixture of different lettuces and vegetables. Then there was a long wait for the pie. A few couples that came in after us and ordered spaghetti or ravioli or whatever got served well before us. Across the restaurant a pizza was served to a table, but a short time later was returned to the kitchen. From where we were, we couldn’t hear what the issue was, but the one person of the group who got a meal was served and the rest of his party had to settle for watching him eat.

More waiting. Dinners came out of the kitchen frequently, but no pizzas. Finally, because Donna could see the kitchen exit, she said here comes one. Maybe it is ours. Nope, it stops at the table behind us. Our orders went in at the same time, so it will be a non-issue as long as our pizza is not too far behind. The guy behind us says, this isn’t the pizza I ordered, so the waiter returns to the kitchen with it. Donna goes over to him and asks what the problem was. He replies, “It looked delicious, but there was too much stuff on it.” She tells him, “It was probably ours as we ordered a Supreme.”

Sure enough, the waiter returns within moments and brings us our pizza. Worth the wait. There is heaping helpings of mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, ham, sausage, onions, bell peppers, olives and mushrooms on a crisp not too thin crust. The only thing lacking was it needed a little bit more sauce.

Good salad, good pie, less than a mile away, if they get their service smoothed out, Ferrando’s may have met his match.

In spite of a brief detour back into the kitchen, the pizza was served piping hot. So hot that I burned the top of my mouth in a couple places on the first few bites. After all the years of eating pizza, I still manage to burn the top of my mouth on melted mozzarella or boiling sauce 80% of the time. You would think I would learn.