WebCogito

Stop. Stay. Think.

Quick review:

Overpriced and bland.

For those of you wanting more detail, here it is. The restaurant location is nice, in Addison Circle, though it gives off the vibe of pretending to be more than it is. The restaurant itself is located in a corner of a rotunda surrounding blue structure that perfectly showcases modern art.

Inside, the mood is very romantic, with the lighting turned down very low, and live music being performed most of the evening. Overall, the atmosphere was very inviting. Too bad the same can’t be said about the service..

The service was slow. VERY slow. Our waiter seemed confused when we asked to break up the check, and told us it would take some time. “Some time” turned out to be exactly 33 minutes. This still compared favorably to the time it took to bring out our food, though, as that clocked closer to 40 minutes.

The price for dinner was nothing to sneeze at either, as the least expensive entree on the menu came in at $13, and the most expensive at $31. It would stand to reason that for restaurants that label themselves as “Restaurants of Distinction,” at least the food would be better, tastier, fresher, or would have something that would set it apart from a run-of-the-mill undistinguished restaurant. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The food was bland, the portions were small, and almost uniformly lacking in sides. It was simply not good value for the money.

Finally, while the table where our party was seated had a nice tablecloth, the truth underneath was a little revealing and unexpected: it turned out that, in nice Avanti, Restaurant of Distinction, our table was a plain, portable, plastic folding table. This portable folding table, to be exact. Just not the kind of thing that we would expect to find in a restaurant rated 5 stars from Zagat.

However, when viewing the larger picture, it seemed to fit right in: What we paid for, and expected to get, was not quite what we found under the surface.

Recommendation to avoid.