Teatro Goldoni

Spinach Cappellaci
Buffalo Mozzerella

Veal Chop
Roasted Salmon

"2009 Rammy Award for Favorite Restaurant and was named DC's Best Italian Restaurant by Washingtonian and Esquire Magazines." All these awards and top reviews, I thought this restaurant was a perfect place to take my husband for his birthday. While the ambiance, service and cleanliness are very important when going out to eat, lets face it the food is most important and their food disapointed me big time!

So this time my review will start with the food:

We started out with some fried calamari and buffalo mozzerella as an appetizer. The calamari was bland and needed the tarter sauce to add flavor, this would be the theme of the night...no flavor. The presentation of the food was excellent and beautiful. The calamari had fried red peppers and zuccini mixed in the basket which was fun and different, but the zuccini had more flavor then the calamari. On the plus side it did taste fresh and was not chewy like some calamari i have had. The mozzerella was something new for me, i'll admit but the texture and flavors of it were not pleasing to me. This was the one dish that had a little too much going on. The candied cherry tomatoes, balsamic gelatin and eggplant on top of the mozzerella overpowered the cheese and gave it an abrupt flavor. I ate one piece and did not want any more.

I chose to order the Spinach Cappellaci which was under the pasta section, (pictured above) it was 4 small pasta's filled with butternut squash which was sweet and very different. It was a nice soft fresh pasta dish but tasted more like a desert with the sweetness of the butternut squash inside. Next I had the roasted salmon which was topped with crabcake and laid on top of sauteed spinach. The spinach was crunchy and tasted slightly burnt. the salmon needed salt and pepper and the crab cake had pieces of shell in it. King of like when you buy the cheap grocery store brand of crab meat insted of the phillips crab meat to make crab cakes at home. So i was picking crab shells out of my mouth. My husbands veal chop looked gorgeous and huge. It also was bland and needed some seasoning and flavor. It also had alot of fat on it and was slightly tough and chewy.

After dinner i had a taste for something sweet to get the other flavors out of my mouth, but the desert menu consisted of fruit, gellato and nothing that looked worth my time.

My main complaint about Teatro Goldoni was the lack of flavor in the food, obviously but I was also unhappy that it was not an italian restaurant. Nothing about it made me think italian. There was techno music playing, there were african masks on the wall for decoration. I can see a spin on traditional itialian but this place was just confused. To be fair i will mention the service was excellent, prompt and friendly. they even took the mozzerella off our bill when i told them i hated it (not in those words:) and the prices were reasonable for the dishes they offered. The drinks were also delicious and strong...maybe you can visit the bar for happy hour 5-9pm mon-fri...we couldn't get happy hour prices sitting in the dining room (seriously).

So i think the best thing i learned from this experience is that its best to go off word of mouth to find a good place to eat (like restaurant rundown:) and not off top 100 list or places that have won awards or rankings from the Washingtonian!

2 out of 5 stars for this place..and I won't be going back no thank you