I thought I had come up with a clever idea. Have an early dinner at Mozza and then order 3 pizzas to go for Sunday football watching game day. I had planned on ordering one dish at a time so this wouldn’t be an in and out one hour meal. Our server convinced me to order everything, including take-out, at the same time, assuring me that he would slowly pace the meal. His idea of pacing and mine are very different. My husband described this meal as “And they are off – you have to make the finish line in 62 minutes.” If the food had been good, I might have handled it better. This has to rank as the one of the worst meals ever. At least 3 of the dishes will make the worst dishes of 2010 – quite an accomplishment.
White wine off their list
Beer for my husband off their list
Chicken livers, capers, parsley and guanciale bruschette – excellent – I ended up giving my half to my husband because I didn’t want to fill up. What a mistake as this was the best dish of the night.
Within five minutes, the next course was served – pacing not even close.
Arancine alla bolognese – tiny balls of nothing, My husband ate half of one ball and I took a bite of the other half of the ball. To the restaurant’s credit they took this off the bill. We would not be so lucky as the meal progressed.
Now this is Arancine done right at Drago.
Fried Squash blossoms with ricotta – our server said this was a favorite antipasti at Mozza. Why? Tiny fried blossoms with a teaspoon of ricotta stuffed inside is not a wonderful stuffed squash blossom. We each ate a half of a blossom. Full charge.
A barely stuffed squash blossom
Notice the difference between the blossom from Mozza and the perfectly plump blossom from Vin Bar.
To replace the arancine, I ordered the bone marrow al forno. I was looking forward to lovely roasted bone marrow like at Church and State and Comme Ca. No such luck.
The first picture looks wondrous and I was expecting wondrous bone marrow.
This is what we got – a lump of fat. We each had 1/4 of a teaspoon. Full Charge.
Comme Ca’s Bone Marrow
Church and State’s Bone Marrow
Being from Boston, I love Ipswich clams so of course I ordered the Ipswich clam pizza. Someone in the kitchen is in love with red pepper because that is all you tasted. The clams were buried in “heat” and basically the pie was inedible – one bite only. Full charge.
Egg, bacon, Yukon gold potatoes and Bermuda onions – this was decent and at least edible.
We canceled our take-out order which made the maitre d’ or GM furious. We had planned on ordering dessert and coffee while the take-out was being made so we can’t be accused of leaving them with already made pizzas, unless they decided to make them ahead of time. We paid the bill and after 62 minutes, we were in the car driving home hungry, weary, and poorer. In retrospect, if we had ordered one dish at a time, we would have left after the arancine and gone to Craftbar, Bazzar or Spago. Anything would have better than this disaster.
Chicken liver is some pretty awesome stuff.
most hyped restaurant ever…….food looks awful…I have never had a good meal at the pizzeria….the osteria is awesome
Looks like an awful meal indeed, not your usual standard. Those pizzas especially. What is it about people who cook pizzas with a base that might as well be a pan loaf of bread. Thin and crispy I say!
Fionn
Dave, the chicken liver was perfect. David H, most of the food was awful. Fion, the pizza was thick bread with a bit of topping.
Why would you think that any place is going to let you sit there and order 1 thing at a time?
There hasn’t been one restaurant that we have been to that hasn’t let us nor has discouraged us from ordering one dish at a time. We also order splits – one for two. This is also encouraged. Some restaurants that we frequent often devise a tasting menu for us. To site recent examples of ordering a course at a time, there is Bar Bouchon, Bazaar, Chinois, Church and State, Craftbar and Craft, Drago and Il Pastaio to name a few.
Belinda,
Where do you eat. A restaurant should be in the hos[itality business….
liz, i’m sorry that you had such a negative experience at pizzeria mozza. My experiences have been generally very positive, but maybe that’s because I’ve ordered the right things. I enjoyed that chicken liver dish, as well as a few pizzas (my favorite is the leek and sausage pizza). The butterscotch budino is also an excellent dessert. In general I think the restaurant is overpriced, but they can pretty much charge whatever they want. Also, in terms of pizza, I wouldn’t put it in my top five. Oh, and how the heck do you mess up bone marrow?
Matt, we asked the advice of the server as to what to order. I love bone marrow, but this was just a glob of fat that didn’t even taste roasted or cooked – just fat. We had planed on ordering the budino while they were making our very lengthy take-out order for Sunday football games (3 pizzas, 2 orders of meatballs, 1 Nancy’s chopped salad), but we canceled it given the quality of the food we had just barely touched.
Hey Liz, See what happens when you decide to take a break from cooking football snacks? You will never convince John now to consider ‘take out’ next football season after this. LOL
Superbowl – Gougeres, Foie Gras Pate, Flannery Steaks, Stuffed Baked Potato, Grilled Romaine Lettuce Salad, Home-made-Onion Bread, Cheese – probably epoisse and other stuff and maybe Persimmon Pudding. OK Robert?
See…with a menu like that you’ll never get your apron off on Sundays. LOL
Sounds great Liz!
count me in for superbowl sunday…
Your food does look poor. I have had the fried squash blossoms there two times, both successfully. Not sure if the reason that mine looked (and I’ll wager tasted) a heck of a lot better than yours was because I was dining with an investor in the restaurant. I’m amazed you lasted as long as you did with that many misses…
Aaron, if I hadn’t put in my full order at the beginning, I would have left after the Arancine. They were hostile that we canceled our take-out order and I specifically stated not to “fire” it until we were eating dessert, also canceled.