The Woodlands Biotch

decided to drop in on that new little italian place up off of research forest drive last night, la trattoria. on our way there, i told bf we needed to try someplace new, it’d been a while since i’d biotched about bad food or bad service or both. great, he says to me, now you’ve gone and cursed it. i doubted my mystical powers, but as it turns out…

when we arrived about 5:30-ish, the place was relatively slow. there was a large party in the private dining room, but it would appear they’d been there a while and their meal was underway. the rest of the joint was perhaps at 2/3 to 3/4 capacity, and no waiting. so we got our table and the first thing i notice is that based on the pricing, this is certainly not an “everyday eatery” as their tagline advertises. because i don’t know about you, but i certainly can’t afford sixteen dollars a plate for dinner everyday. and if part of that cost comes from them serving water without ice in wine glasses out of wine bottles, well then, i say get us some sturdy water glasses, a couple of plastic pitchers and let us see a reduction back to reality, hmm?

in an effort to stay at a reasonable total, i opted for the special that was advertised on the sandwich board at the entrance; spaghetti and meatballs, $7.99. bf ordered lasagne. i asked our server, susan, about the special because i wanted to know what came with it. “tell me about the special” i said. “we don’t have one that i’m aware of” she replies. “ehm, spaghetti or something, up on the board?” bf inquires. “oh, let me check with the manager” she says… and disappears. for five minutes. when she returns she explains that was the lunch special, but okay, they can do that for me.

oh, well, thank you. i’m so glad the cost of the exact same meal didn’t have to increase because the sauce has been marinating for the last six hours… more on that in a bit.

so we place our order and off she goes to wherever it is servers disappear to for ten-minute intervals, and just about the time we’re out of water and bread and ready to sop someone and ask for refills, she magically arrives and offers both. ah, good, i think. maybe it won’t be so bad.

somewhere in the course of this first 30 minutes of being there another couple is seated at the table next to us. and shortly after we got our bread and water, our server returned with our meals. which she graciously served to the people at the next table. she asked them if everything looked alright, to which they looked over their servings a bit quizzically… while bf and i sat there thinking aloud it was not only weird that they got their food before us but they also coincidentally ordered the same dishes. about this time, susan turns on her heel (she had walked a few steps away) and stops the couple from actually diving into our meals to apologize to them and say it wasn’t their food, it was ours. after which she took the dishes off their table and turned to us to serve us.

now, you’d think she’d say something like, “i’m sorry, i accidentally gave your meals to that couple, would you like these, or if you prefer i could get fresh dishes for you.” but no. what she said instead was, “my, well, i promise you they didn’t even touch your meals, here you are,” and put the plates in front of us. and then walked away. ugh. trying to think positively (because i do so so rarely) i told bf that i was pretty sure they hadn’t actually touched our food, so let’s just eat. and that’s when we discovered that the food was apparently no better than the service. the lasagne was so spicy that bf almost immediately began to sweat. my meatballs (all two of them) were barely sauced and nearly pink on the inside. and flavorless. and the sauce in the spaghetti was spicy, too. like not a good spicy. like i need more water over here spicy. pronto!

so we stopped eating. and started waiting. and waiting. and just about the time we were ready to trip the next server that whisked by a-la-bud-light style and ask for the manager, susan magically appeared again to ask how everything was. so we told her. in no uncertain terms. that we didn’t care for either of our meals, to which she offered an alternative, but seeing as how all but the (one) alfredo dish has the same sauce, we politely declined. she offered to go talk to the manager for us. we said great. and then began waiting again. for about five minutes. when she returned, she said the meals had been taken off our ticket, and as an added gesture, we were to be given dessert. so i once again thought, you know, maybe there could be a glimmer of hope.

but no. because it was fully another 12 minutes later, just about the time we were ready to scratch a note of abandonment on the fabric tablecloth that the manager herself finally appeared to deliver our desserts. what on earth took the ample staff so long to get to ready-made desserts from the display cooler in the front, back to the kitchen onto the larger plates and then back to our table i’ll never know. but by the time she did, i had dug around in my now cold spaghetti and discovered the intact bay leaf that had been in the sauce. so i took the opportunity to comment to the manager that, as a cook, i know the dangers of leaving the leaves in the sauce (which include choking, esophagus scratches and cuts and even… death). now, remember i said something earlier about the marinating time of sauce? well, we then went on to tell her of the spicy experience with the sauce, and this is the story we got (i shit you not):

“oh, yes, well, we had several complaints about the sauce being too spicy yesterday, too, but we thought that we’d used up that batch of sauce today (hence the spaghetti lunch special, i surmise) and you know, of course, the later it gets, the longer the sauce marinates so it just gets spicier… and i guess when we dumped the little bit of sauce from yesterday into today’s batch to kind of even out the spiciness it didn’t really work, heheheheh… so anyway, we’re sorry about that.”

which made me feel so much better. to know that i was eating yesterday’s leftovers. that had apparently been “marinating” all damn day today. and that was supposedly acceptable.

needless to say, i was not impressed. not with our server. not with the manager. and certainly not with la trattoria. which, by the way, sounds like italian for “the trots.”

ugh.