Had dinner last night at Dante's. Being a restaurateur myself, I have come to expect a few things from a restaurant. We were seated without any question as to our preference. Of course we ended up one table over from 2 smokers. That didn't seem to bother us as much as I thought it would have. 10 minutes later, we have water, but no menu and no server. I call a busser over and ask him for a couple menus. He delivers. (This is a fine dining establishment) About 5 minutes later the waitress arrives to see if we would like cocktails, no thanks. She then dissapears again. We spy her waiting on a table of 6. She gets their order and then stumbles over to our table. I order Prime Rib, my companion orders New York Strip. 15 Minutes later we are still sitting there with water, nothing else. I notice that a table with a different server who has been there less than 10 minutes, has drinks, bowls of soup and bread. Oh I forgot, we did have the butter on the table, slowly melting as we wait for something to spread it on. I call over the Hostess, I explain that we have been here for almost 1/2 hour and have nothing to show for it. We are Famished. She sprints off towards the kitchen, returns and says that Our food should be out in just a moment, the waitress had grouped us with the table of 6 and another table of 4. I know from my years in the business that one generally needs to pay more attention to smaller groups than larger groups. Smaller groups (3 & under) tend to notice the time more than a large group where many many conversations take place. Anyway, now arrives our salads, and bread. Salads are typical, but good. Bread is parkerhouse, the first roll is lightly crusty and tender on the inside. My next roll could have killed a good size rat. It was so hard I couldn't even cut it. Dittos for the next roll. Once again, we call the busser. I swear I never complain when I go out, I am usually embarrased to do such a thing or when someone else does it. Our meals arrive via the Hostess, it seems that the server is a bit embarrassed or put off by our requests. My prime rib arrives perfectly cooked, Medium Rare, ditto for my companion. The hostess offers us a bottle of "Dante" sauce, a rich, spicy, sweet, jalapeno steak and seafood sauce, we try it, we like it. Unfortunately it doesn't go with Prime Rib, but it goes well with New York Strip. She offers us a free bottle to take when we leave, we accept. We did appreciate her keeping an eye on us, it did relieve some of the feeling of being neglected at first. She obviously has some concern for the customers. Unfortunately, the server never apologizes, and maintains her distance from us as if we are going to bite her, we try to be light hearted with her, and exclaim how much we enjoy dinner, but she doesn't seem to notice that we aren't mad. Well the bill arrived, and it was our turn to feel embarrased, after all the hostess went through to make our meal enjoyable, we pull out our Entertainment Card, which gives us $15.00 off, I don't think we would have ever thought of going there had we not seen the book. The server graciously accepted the card, her money and her tip. The Hostess delivered on her promise to offer us a free bottle of Dante Sauce. We accepted. We leave feeling well filled and sated. Now comes the teaser. I do not blame the restaurant for this if they follow proper cooking procedures and sanitization procedures. We ate around 6:30. Around 11:30 my stomach started giving me trouble. Around 12:30 I sprinted from my room to the bathroom, upon which I vomited in quantity and then proceeded to have extreme diarrhea, dizziness and nausea. Being that the only thing we ate that day was Dinner (we slept in until 1:00pm, it was sunday)....I can't pinpoint any other cause. Only I was affected, my companion was perfectly fine. I spent almost 45 minutes in the bathroom in pain. I think I have learned a valuable lesson, not to order red meat, below Medium or Medium Well. Just to be safe. I'll go back, I just will order something else next time, even though the Juicy, tender prime rib flavor, still lingers....
Cincinnati, OH