Title: Dinner at Bella Trattoria
Date Taken: February 17, 2012
Last night I went to Bella Trattoria in the Inner Richmond area for a friend's birthday. I actually went there with the same group of friends for my birthday (they chose the restaurant) and both times I can say that the service was excellent, but the food is average.
We had a 7:30 p.m. reservation for a table for 3 but when we got there, the restaurant was packed. Granted, this is a fairly small restaurant, but it was slightly upsetting that we had to wait as long as we did even though we had a reservation. They told us to wait at the bar until we were able to be seated. Since I was with friends, time did pass fairly quickly. To be honest, I did not check my watch to see when we actually got seated, but I'm pretty sure we didn't get to sit down until past 8:00 p.m. There were 2 other parties waiting to be seated as well (a 2 person party and a 4 person party) and they sat first due to the type of tables that freed up. But the manager was really friendly, kept us updated on the status of tables, and in the end actually gave us a free appetizer as an apology for having us wait.
This is the free appetizer - I believe it was polenta. It was tasty, but oily.
They also gave bread, which was DELICIOUS. It was super soft but the bottom was crunchy. I would have put a picture here, but it's not all that special to look at and the picture I took turned out super blurry.
Item: Maccarune cu Salsiccia = rigatoni tomato cream sugo with Italian sausage
Price: $14.00
This was tasty as well. I was very hungry by the time my entrée came, so I finished it all ^___^;; I had ordered the "Pasta Norcina = Baked rigatoni, marinated chicken, crimini mushroom béchamel for $16.00" last time, and it was good but I had only eaten about half of it so the next day when I warmed it up there was a huge pool of oil at the bottom o___o But that's expected, I guess, with Italian food because of the cheese and olive oil. I think the Pasta Norcina was a larger portion than the Maccarune cu Salsiccia.
Item: Tiramisu
Price: $7.00
This is a terrible picture - not only was the lighting bad, but my side looks like it was melting! It was okay; I've had better tiramisu elsewhere. It was also oddly a little watery. I shared this with my friends and we ended up still having some left over. I think it was due to us partially being full from the dinner and partially because of the watery-ness (at least, that's why I didn't finish it up).
Overall, this is a nice restaurant. It's easy to get to, parking is relatively easy, the food is good, and the service is good (the manager and our server were really charismatic). I wouldn't go out of my way to get to this restaurant, nor do I think I'll ever ~crave~ to go to Bella Trattoria specifically to get Italian food, but if you're in the area and you want Italian it's a good place to go to.
My apologies on the quality of these pictures - I went at night time, only brought my point-and-shoot camera, and did not want to use the deadly built-in flash. So the color is a bit off, even after doing some photoshop work, and probably doesn't do the food that much justice appearance-wise.
Later days,
Karen
