What can I do for you?


Ok, that was definitely not the question I thought I’d have to answer to as we entered this popular Italian dining spot on a holiday weekend Monday afternoon; it was 1:45 pm and my friend and I had just made up our minds to eat here after we discovered our first choice had recently closed its doors on our side of town, and moved itself across the bridge to a new location. Good thing my friend called earlier to make last minute plans, otherwise we would both arrive at the former location to find an empty place.

Ok, so now we are left trying to decide where to go for lunch; after the expected back and forth discussion, we easily settled on the Carrousel Plaza Mall location, just because there are at least five restaurants in there from which we could select from. We decided the Italian restaurant would do. Easy enough, right?

As we walked in, the hostess/waitress greeted us with “What can I do for you?” Huh? My friend and I both looked at each other with the same dumbfounded look as we wondered: “What kind of question was that? Is this not a restaurant? What did she think we could possibly want? Aren't  they supposed to be serving food here?

My response to her question? Huh, what about some food? To which she responded, “Come this way”,  We followed her to our seats. There were still a few people in there, in various stages of dining, so we settled in to have a nice dining experience. The meal was average, nothing to write home about, but the service or lack thereof was a different story. As it turned out, by the time we ordered our drinks there was only a ten minute window in which to order our food, the kitchen was closing at 2 pm, something our waitress failed to mention when she sat us down.

There is nothing more unnerving that being rushed through your meal, but then I would have nothing to talk about regarding this lunch date; if the hostess/waitress would have told us at the outset that we only had a few minutes in which to order our meal we would have left. We could have decided to patronize any one of the other four or five restaurants on the plaza. As it happened, we ordered, we ate and then kept looking over our shoulders—feeling as paying intruders in this restaurant.

Needless to say, that’s the last time they’ll see my Visa card at this establishment; the next time I feel like eating Italian food I'll cook it myself or pull out one of Mario's recipe books. But, I certainly would not visit the Plaza's Italian dining place or recommend it to anyone else.

That’s what I’m talking about!

Marcia C