Getting Into a Bad Food Habit

Dr. Pomatter: I want to talk to you, somewhere outside of here. Maybe we can have a coffee or something?
Jenna: I can't have coffee, it's on the bad food list you gave to me. What kind of doctor are you?

—Waitress (2007)

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It seems as though I write about dining out a lot, lately. It's not really the case (this is my fifth post in 2008 that has anything to do with food), but it just feels that way.

On Thursday night I got home from work kind of late and not especially in the mood to make dinner, so I suggested that we just get some kind of takeout. GF's suggestion was that we walk up to Angelina's. I'd been there once before about five years ago, and remembered it as a pretty positive experience: good food, good service; the worst thing you could say was that the place was pretty crowded. But they were accommodating and my dining partner and I had a decent time.

Well, as the saying goes, that was then and this is now.

The restaurant went through a change of ownership in mid-2005, and may have done so again a few months back. I'm not especially clear on this; I remember seeing "Public Auction" signs and such not long ago. At any rate, the only thing that's improved is the décor. Everything else has taken a nosedive.

We walked in and the place was nearly empty. We were greeted by a young lady who asked us "how many?" and then asked us if we had a reservation. You couldn't get a good checker game going on but this chick was worried about reservations. Um, no. We didn't know we needed them. She asked us if a booth was okay, and we were fine with that.

A "booth" turned out to be one of the circular banquettes in the corner of the room. Three of us at a table for six, and they never took away the extra setups. It took forever to get service and the food wasn't especially good, although I'll give them points for the mussels appetizer I got: about two dozen of them in a butter/garlic sauce, and they weren't bad. But the bread looked like a sub roll that had been cut up (and had started to go stale, besides); my penne with meat sauce was too sweet for a meat sauce; GF's chicken, described as having a marsala-based sauce with mozzarella on top and linguine below, was kind of flavorless, and our garlic bread was little more than the same bread that was already on the table, but the slices were toasted and tasted as though perhaps someone had walked past it with a clove of garlic.

The sad fact is, we could have walked in the other direction, to Valentino's, and gotten a better meal for half the price. Angelina's has fallen far, and its only saving grace is that the prior owners sold the crabcake concession to a different company, so it's not these guys who are doing that end of the business. But overall it's kind of a shame. 

Comments

[yellojkt]

Usually a change in management is a good thing. But clearly this was a change for the worse.

[epiph]

I sometimes feel funny about asking for reservations when my restaurant is dead, but we have to check off people as they come in, and make sure we're honoring any special requests, so maybe you came in at around the same time as someone else was going to...