Saturday, March 7, 2015

Cafe Amici

Cafe Amici is located in the Bella Vista Country Club, but it is open to the public, not just to Bella Vistans.

Okay, so a friend of mine loves Cafe Amici,and she knows I food blog, so she asked me to eat there with her and blog about it.  Unfortunately, I didn't like it.

We showed up at 11am, on a sunny weekday in January.  It's quite a large area.  There's 2 sides to it, one with a bar.  And the lower section is right in front of the windows, with a great view over the golf course.

When we arrived, we were the first ones there for lunch.  The tables were covered in white tablecloths, which my friend said were new.  As soon as we sat, the server brought us some glasses of water.  The silverware was rolled up in the napkin, along with the straw.

The service was really slow.  I mean, really slow.  At one point my friend even got up and whistled to try and get some attention.  We ordered when the server brought the water, otherwise it might have taken forever.  When the food was ready, she brought it out, but after that she vanished again.  My friend went searching for an ice tea refill, but couldn't find a pitcher.  Eventually the server showed up and we asked for refills.  It took forever for her to return, which is when my friend started whistling to attract anyone's attention.

When we were ready to leave, we sat around, waiting, and finally gave up and went up to the cash register.  A different server came out and said we could pay at the table.  We said our server had vanished, so she found her in the kitchen so we could check out.

The food was okay.  I ordered the Chicken Marsala, which came with a salad.  My friend tried to order blue cheese dressing, but was told they didn't have it anymore because the servers were wasting it.  (They put the dressing on the salad for you.)

Here's a picture of my meal.  Tell me if you notice anything wrong with it.


Did you find it?  Apparently, the noodle portion of your dish is spaghetti with sauce.  The bread was pretty good. The marsala was okay, if a bit strong and buttery.  Probably because there were no noodles with it.  Even the spaghetti was alright.  But how hard is it to keep a pot of noodles with butter going, that you can throw some marsala over?  Especially if you're keeping the spaghetti going for every plate.

Overall, I was not impressed.  I'm giving it 2-1/2 stars.  The food was okay.  The service was really bad.  Someone said they hire people with disabilities to work there, which is great, but you still need to train them.  Our waitress didn't know how to take an order.  She just stood there and stared at us.  We finally started telling her our order.  When I placed my order, she wrote it down, and stared at me.  I had to ask if it came with a salad.  And then what the dressings were.  It was very odd.

The place had been open for a while by then, but apparently no one is training the servers.  The servers seem to take your order, then reappear when the salad is ready, then reappear when the main meal is ready.  Otherwise, they seem to hide out in the kitchen, where you can't reach them.  If they can fix their server problem, I would consider going back to give them a second chance.


Cafe Amici on Urbanspoon

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