"This place has long been on my list of destinations to visit in Monterey, and today we finally did it while zipping around on e-scooters. We locked them to a pole, and in we went. The restaurant wasn't busy at 7ish, and there's plenty of room and a good ambience. Our waiter was quick to take our order and fairly attentive. He had an Italian accent that added to the authentic feel of the place, and was kind enough to remove the soup that my wife didn't like from the bill. Our service experience was pretty positive, but let's get into the food. We came HUNGRY. I hate reviewing places when I'm starving because I'll usually just assault the food and not take the time to properly taste it. Today was different. We ordered two entrees, the aforementioned soup, and a dessert to share among my wife, my son, and myself. Oh, and a side of meatballs. I was very excited by the server's repeated reminders that their pasta is made fresh everyday. I am a sucker for fresh homemade pasta. My excitement was quickly tempered though. The soup of the day was a pumpkin soup. I'll admit I am not a member of the pumpkin spice brigade. My appreciation for pumpkin happens once a year with my mom's homemade pumpkin pie, made from real pumpkins she roasts herself, not that canned business. This soup was indeed pumpkin colored, but that's where the association ended. It was bland, and somewhat tainted by the bread and cheese placed in the middle of it. The bread turned to a soggy blob, adding nothing to the flavor. Even generous helpings of salt and pepper weren't able to save it. It was graciously taken away and credited. Because we were splitting two entrees with three people, we also ordered a side of meatballs. The side is two meatballs in a healthy portion of marinara. I believe it to be a beef and pork blend. The meatballs were hard. Really hard. They tasted like they'd been frozen and reheated. Since we already sent back the soup, I gutted it out and ate them, but I wish I hadn't. The flavor was... ok. They were just so hard and overdone. The spaghetti and carbonara came next. I confess I was excited about the carbonara. I wasn't bothered by the thick spaghetti style noodles instead of the linguine I had come expecting, but I was by the fact that they were undercooked. The pasta was so thick and stiff it caught me off guard. It was also very greasy. The spaghetti and meatballs had much more appropriately cooked pasta and a nice marinara, but it was brought down by those rock hard meatballs again. Our hunger drove us to finish both entrees, but it came with a healthy dose of regret later. Finally the tiramisu. We came here primarily for that. I didn't expect it to come in a soufflé dish, but I'm open to new presentations. Sadly, the lady fingers were mush. I did like the mascarpone part, but not much else. It was better than places that serve tiramisu shaped cake, but not much. Maybe we'll try it again in the future. Maybe not. Tonight wasn't great."
