We were there September 19 for dinner. We had the local house wine which was not very good, but delicious olive bread with the Antipasto Degustazione which consisted of sautéed broccoli, eggplant layered casserole with cheese, caponata, a pork sort of aspic, 2 pieces of braseola, 1 piece spicy salame, 6 olives, 1 fried zucchini blossom. We also ordered a carpaccio di fungi over arugula with shaved Parmesan that had a lemony dressing. All very, very good.
We ordered a pizza of the house Vecchia Botte which had buffalo mozzarella, mushrooms, prosciutto, olive oil, arugula and oregano. We watched the pizzaiolo make the pizzas by hand at the open pizza station and cook them in a wood-burning oven. Stretch the dough, spread the sauce and top, then slide into the wood-burning oven which he stoked with small logs several times. He would give the pizzas quarter turns with a 6 foot peel or move to a hotter or cooler area in the oven, three to four minutes later out would pop the pizza! Great oven singed flavor.
This pizzaiolo was passionate. When he took out the pizzas he would ring a bell for the servers to pick them up but first they needed to top them with oil or other fresh items. If they took more than 30 seconds to show up he would repeatedly ring the bell again until they did. It was quite a show!
The place had disorganized and frenetic service. That, coupled with the weird fluorescent lighting, the tension between the servers and pizzaiolo (and our pizza which did cool off too much before they brought it to us) took this rating down to 3.5 (and therefore 3) stars from a potential 4. read more
