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I have a friend who lives in Paris. She keeps a tiny flat in an old building on an old street that's steps away from many of the expensive, cosmopolitan bistros and cafés of the stylish Saint-Germain-des-Prés neighborhood. But my friend, who is American, does not dine at those upscale boîtes. No, she prefers the unassuming Italian restaurant just a few doors from her apartment. It's not a fancy restaurant or even a very good one. But she knows that the food doesn't need to be spectacular in a neighborhood café — it just needs to be comforting. And my friend's storefront Italian dining room serves the kind of simple pasta dishes and soups that she liked as a child growing up on the American East Coast. All that's missing are the checked tablecloths and the Frank Sinatra recordings.
The point is, there's a certain kind of simple Italian restaurant — a neighborhood joint, really — that has become so iconic (with some assistance from Hollywood, where family-owned Italian restaurants have been celebrated from Lady and the Tramp to Big Night) that you can find one almost anywhere in the world. In the United States, there are also plenty of corporate-contrived imitations of the real neighborhood Italian joint — Buca de Beppo, Carraba's, Zio's — scattered throughout the suburbs, but they don't count. At the kind of restaurant I'm talking about, patrons are immediately recognized again after coming to eat for only the second time.
In the case of Parkville's Frank's Italian Restaurant and the new midtown location of the Mezzaluna restaurant (the original is still alive and well in Lenexa), I heard customers greeted with cries of "You're back!" by staffers who clearly don't forget a face — not even mine. The handsome head waiter and manager-in-training at the new Mezzaluna is the resolutely cheery Juan, who welcomes his diners so warmly and effusively that my friend David was starstruck. "If that's how customers are welcomed here, I want to be a regular," he told me.
David was less impressed with the behavior of a different Mezzaluna employee, a manager type he said had loudly scolded one of the servers in the middle of the dining room. He was imperious, David explained to me after I sat down at the table, arriving a few minutes after him.
Now, I believe that a dash of imperiousness — not too much, mind you — adds an appropriate theatricality to the restaurant experience, and this particular employee turned out to be quite entertaining. A week earlier, I had dined at this same restaurant — the brick building on Gregory formerly occupied by Papa Keno's Pizzeria — with a different friend, who was poring over the menu looking for a vegetarian dish. There were several options, but before my friend could contemplate any of them, the imperious one pulled the menu out of her hand with a dramatic flourish and announced, "I will create a special pasta just for you." I mean, who wouldn't love an offer like that?
"I don't know that I would have actually ordered this," my friend Diane whispered when her dish arrived. The kitchen had whipped together a fine bowl of spaghetti with artichoke hearts, slices of portabella mushrooms, garlic cloves, carrots, green beans and corn in a white-wine-and-garlic sauce. "It's not bad," she admitted. "Not like the bread."
The bread? Were those rosemary-dusted oversized cubes of plaster on the table supposed to be bread? True, it looked like focaccia, and I thought it was until I took an exploratory bite and nearly chipped a tooth. A hunk of real focaccia would have helped sop up the fabulous brandy cream sauce draped over that night's veal special, but there was none to be had at that meal.
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Please don't eat here. I have no idea what their lenexa location is like, but their waldo location is terrible. I had finger prints on all of my plates, a warm salad that was $4 and only five bites big, and the eggplant parm I couldn't even eat more than three bites it was overcooked, and tasted like nothing. I love the location I guess I will just have to wait for the next place to come along. Mezzaluna won't be around long.
Please don't eat here. I have no idea what their lenexa location is like, but their waldo location is terrible. I had finger prints on all of my plates, a warm salad that was $4 and only five bites big, and the eggplant parm I couldn't even eat more than three bites it was overcooked, and tasted like nothing. I love the location I guess I will just have to wait for the next place to come along. Mezzaluna won't be around long.
I need to check this out, if i am near to their location. Sounds like delicious foods.
Regards,
http://www.seochampion.com
I need to check this out, if i am near to their location. Sounds like delicious foods. Regards, http://www.seochampion.com
Had one of the worst service experiences ever at the Mezzaluna at Lenexa. I'm a pretty laid back guy, but it was just flat out terrible. Bad enough that I tell my friends not to go there. Food was quite good, but service with a smile it was not.
Had one of the worst service experiences ever at the Mezzaluna at Lenexa. I'm a pretty laid back guy, but it was just flat out terrible. Bad enough that I tell my friends not to go there. Food was quite good, but service with a smile it was not.
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