Would you like to feel like a guest star on Jersey Shore?
Would you like to release your inner bad-ass by asking the hostess to make sure there are no cops walking by and then running down the street holding two full glasses and a half-full bottle of wine?
If you answered yes to the above questions, Al Dente is the place for you! Just make sure to show up very early for your reservation so that the host can send you to the bar of Benevento’s (next door) to wait. The hostess there gives you the most enlightening advice: “If there are no seats, you can stand.” Then, you can order a bottle of wine from the J-Wow look-alike bartender who will uncork the bottle and pour it into what looks like two small beer glasses. Let’s pause to convey some sympathy for my suffocating Chianti…poor wine never got a chance to breathe!
The good news is, after the rather bizarre experience at Benevento, our table at Al Dente was ready so we quickly and discreetly ran over with our bottle of wine and almost full glasses (but we had to pay for the wine there!). This is where the bizarre turns into a lovely dinner.
Our server was the cutest, most pleasant Italian grandma-like lady ever. She immediately transferred our hypoxic (or is it hypoxemic?) wine into proper wine glasses. The gnocchi was perfectly cooked – the tomato sauce was good but nothing special but it’s hard to make gnocchi so well so the sauce hardly mattered. The pesto is for picky eaters who can’t handle real pesto but don’t want to be scorned for requesting alfredo. 3 stars for the food. The thing that earned this place an extra star was the service. Although we lost track of time and stayed at the restaurant way past closing time, our server didn’t bring us the check until we asked. Everyone was wonderfully friendly and pleasant and no one made us feel rushed or like we needed to leave.
Bottom line: Really fun date place, but make sure your date has a working knowledge of Jersey Shore…and open container laws.
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