La Piazzetta

La Piazzetta is an Italian Western Restaurant situated in the heart of Soho that offers an array of gourmet soup, salad, pasta, pizza and dessert. All of these plus a bottle of the house white wine were experienced by Hogan and I last night as we availed my birthday gift of a 6-course dinner for two from my sister, Khrista and her boyfriend, AJ, via groupon. I love how groupon makes me explore restaurants like this. Its location was a little hard to find as I haven't really gone to this particular mini alley called Tsun Wing Lane. If you take the IFC exit from Central station, go hit the Mid Level Escalators and go down the 2nd junction. Find the Graham Street and go straight up. My Iphone map helped me check constantly if I was heading to the right direction.

Upon getting there and mentioning about our reservations, we didn't want to expect anything as it was a groupon deal. Most of the time, since the discount was far too great and there were just too many people availing it, chances are, a "lack" of decent treatment happens. Nonetheless, the Filipina who got us into our table were very efficient, very fast and very accommodating. I was satisfied in terms of service. However, the food did not really taste good to me. I am a Filipina and we love spices, tomatoes and that pang of a good drink.

Let me start off with the soup. Since we were hungry, we thought that it was alright. It came with this mini pizza that was too salty that we were figuring it out if it was made salty as the soup seriously needed a little salt. Hahahaha! I didn't expect one slice to be too salty. We let it pass. The next one that came was our appetizer. Smoked slices of salmon that I thought was so rich with flavor. That's why maybe it was sliced as thin as paper. And they made it to be shared. I thought we were having one each all the way with the main course meals. But you're just allowed to choose one for each main course and we got 2 main courses that were lined up. We decided to order more then if we are still not full by the time we get to eat everything.

"Smoked Salmon with some Greens and Onion"

We ordered Spaghetti with tomatoes for Main Course 1 and for Main Course 2, we ordered

Grilled Mini T-Bone that came with roasted potatoes, eggplants and mushrooms.

As you can see, the shots that I have posted up are quite blurred as the ambiance had cozy dimmed lights that gave my Iphone a hard time documenting. Light music played but I suggest they should play any instrumental featuring European acoustics. Like Classic/Spanish guitar tunes... or violin background music could really soothe it. Oh! I remember Christmas songs playing. Understandable. The house white wine was kept chilled beside me as the second order of steak came in for Hogan and I to chug in.

Like most times that I drank wine, a partner was always there.

And it's called "CHEESE". I ordered a platter of it with three kinds of cheese:

Parmesan, Mozzarella and Goat Cheese, (YUM!!!!)

all garnished with herbs making them toppings for green salad.

Undeniably, everything was overpriced.

A glass of coke was priced around hk$89. It was just crazy.

I don't mind the service charge but everything else was just way unreasonable.

I'd say, it was a good experience all in all but I'm taken aback

whether I'm going back or not.

Let the dessert presentation convince you.

 

Hahaha!!!! Need I say more? I don't know. I'll give it a 2 stars out of 5. Other information that you have to know... Dress code: Casual; Non-smoking restaurant; Dwells in a small space, the toilet is just too near the bar; 10% Service Charge - check!; Accepts credit cards, prefers phone reservations, serves alcoholic drinks. The house wine kind of tasted cheap. Thank God for the cheese platter.

Being a food critic, not recommended at all. But, the bottom line is, I get to share the experience with Hogan. We had fun and that's the most important thing. Thank you Khrista and AJ for adding up pages to our book. Hehehe!!!!