Viaggio

 I ate at Viaggio with three other people late last fall and was less
 than impressed.  I would not go back.  One of my friends was very
 pleased with her food (pasta with veal, as I recall), one said it was
 okay (the roasted half chicken) and two of us were disappointed.  I
 had the seafood risotto, which tasted quite good and had a fairly
 generous amount of fish, scallops and shrimp in it.  However, the rice
 was not cooked properly--the grains still had a hard core in the
 center.  It was pretty soupy, too; in fact, served in a soup bowl
 rather than on a plate, as I have had in other restaurants.  My other
 friend's experience was even worse.  She ordered polenta with roasted
 vegetables.  It also came in a bowl, was the consistency of thick soup
 (which I believe is too thin), and had -- guess what -- no vegetables
 in it.  She sent it back, and the replacement had about three pieces
 of zucchini.  Our waiter asked for comments at the end of the meal,
 and the two of us described the problems with our meals.  This brought
 an apology but no adjustment to the bill (not that we asked for one).

 Then there were the service problems.  The more minor one was that our
 waiter was intrusive rather than attentive, and spoke in a
 pretentious, stilted manner that I guess was supposed to be gracious
 and sophisticated ("have we decided what we'd like to enjoy this
 evening?").  He also pushed appetizers and salads, which are a la
 carte.  The restaurant uses the system where someone other than the
 waiter delivers the food, and doesn't know who ordered what.  This is
 one of my pet peeves, and it's plain unacceptable at a place that's
 claiming to offer fine dining. (It's even worse when the person who
 took your order doesn't remember who had what, but that's a different
 story.)

 The more major problem is that I called on Friday afternoon for a
 Saturday night reservation, and was told that the only available times
 were 5:30 and 9:30.  We took 5:30, since one of us was going to a
 concert at 8:00.  Both when we arrived and when we left around 7:00,
 there were literally dozens of tables unoccupied.  I can't think of a
 possible explanation.  They also managed to lose the reservation,
 though they did seat us anyway.  I got the feeling I was supposed to
 feel privileged that they accommodated us.

 Tony Mauro