Porta di Roma
Sunday, October 8th, 2006
As you can see, it was peak dinner time, and there’s hardly a soul inside Porta di Roma. Where are the people? They’re actually dining al fresco in the covered patio right outside. The only ones walking about inside were the waiters/waitresses seemingly getting a good workout going between the kitchen and the patio outside. We were there to order take-out, so I reached for a menu and suddenly this dude in a t-shirt, shorts, and baseball cap came right up to us and asked if we needed anything. Took me a couple of seconds to realize that this guy’s probably the owner of Porta di Roma. I heard somewhere that Italian restaurants try to make you feel like home. Well, I felt like I just barged into this guy’s home.
The owner’s friendly and all, but it’s just the way he’s dressed that threw me off. The rest of the staff were in uniforms, and next to them the owner looked sloppy for lack of a better word. He offered to bring us water and even some bread, but we politely declined. He then went on to suggest some of their dishes, but we knew what we wanted already. We ordered a large New York style pizza with sausage and pineapple, to which the chatty owner commended by saying that the pizzas were handmade by a real Italian chef so it’ll be authentic. We also had a coupon from the Clipper Magazine for 10 free wings which we gave to the waitress who took our order.
We sat there waiting for our food, staring mindlessly at SpongeBob SquarePants on TV being torn in half by a gorilla. Our owner/host told us that we can change the channel if we wanted, but again we politely declined. Pretty soon we got our food, so we paid and left.
This sausage and pineapple pizza brought back memories… memories of those 99 cents pizzas that we used to get at grocery stores. It wasn’t too bad, but the price (about $18) left a bitter aftertaste.
The coupon was for 10 wings, we got only 8. I suppose we can’t complain too much because they were free. But seeing as how we paid nearly $20 for something we could’ve gotten for $3 or $4, we probably should have.
I guess I shouldn’t be too harsh on them. After all, I have yet to try their other menu items, some of which looked pretty good. Perhaps next time I’ll try dining al fresco and experience what true authentic Italian cooking is all about.
Tags: Porta di Roma
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