I hadn't heard much about Osteria Mazzantini, but they were in Culture Map's voting contest for best restaurant. Although, Jimy did mention at lunch today at Caracol that he heard they weren't doing well...for dinner Matt wanted to try something new, so that's where we decided to go, despite Jimy's heeding. I did search on yelp and they go a 4 stars, so I thought, how bad could they be??
The décor was nice, but average design. Dark wood, browns, orange accents, an outdated color scheme....wow, I'm critical! I know, it's just the thoughts that go through this head. We didn't get the multi-colored light bulbs on the ceiling. It made the place look a little cheap, in my opinion. The wine casing did up the scale of the décor. I did like the brick veneer too. The orange aprons were kind of...trying to hard...going with black would have been sufficient.
The bread was nice, maybe a little too flavorful...with herbs and...I think our server said potato. The texture was nice...chewy. We got the mushroom polenta for appetizer which was pretty good. The arugula salad was not very good, too much cheese. With the help of our server, I got his suggested Carbonara and Matt got the Sirloin Steak. I did not like the Carbonara and Matt said his steak sucked. I tasted it, it tasted bland to me. He said the more he ate it, the worst it got. It was cooked differently on the different sides of the steak, well done in some areas, almost raw in some. He could not stomach the cooked arugula that came with his meal, and the potatoes were blah. He also said the orange aprons reminded him of Whataburger.
When our server, who was great, asked us if we would like dessert...which I had already decided I did not want to try dessert here...Matt just responded no, without asking me. He usually asks me. What we discussed later is how we decide if we want to try dessert or not...if the food is good, we're having dessert, if not, then we're not. It's just funny that we were thinking the same thing without having discussed it. I also asked him what he thought I would rate the restaurant...he said 2.5...he was totally spot on. We don't have the same taste in food, but we tend to have the same taste in quality. He said he thought I would rate it 2.5 because that's what he would rate it. And now...I have written too much about this restaurant...