I enjoyed my dinner here and will definitely come back. cozy space reminded me of the red sauce italian places in south philly.
I was surprised when the shrimp scampi secondi hit the table with the apps. I quickly realized why, there was a lot of delicious scarpetta’ing going on with that sauce. ht to the server for coursing it out that way, she knows what’s up.
I like their food, but I’m an even bigger fan of the vibe. Partially attributable to the location, but it just feels like a really cool spot with a good crowd. Similar to their other places Lowboy and Bar Flores.
Warrior: It was better than I expected. The wine list was small but smart. The garlic bread was the best I’ve ever had — outstanding! The pasta, while soft, was acceptably al dente to me. The biggest problem with our meal was gross oversalting. The broccoli was inedible, the spaghetti aglio y olio bordered on inedible, and the branzino was negatively impacted by oversalting. There were other problems. The shrimp were mealy, and the branzino was dry. I would probably be writing a somewhat favorable review if it were not for the salting problem. But even putting that aside, I consider the Funke restaurants overwhelmingly superior to Donna’s — with similar flavors — so I can’t see a reason to return.
Peony: I don’t think I’ll go back. It would be decent if the food were not too salty. Lovely environment though.
As far as comparing to Funke they’re such dif things. Donna’s is based on old school red sauce joints. For that reason I ain’t ordering prawns or branzino there and go heavier on the classics like a parm or piccata with my pastas (which I usually do the red sauce ones or the lasagna rolls)
Think of Hayato as the more valuable “currency” and the standard-bearer of difficulty. For every 8.437 successful Donna seating, there is 1.000 successful Hayato seating. LOL. #GettingAcademicHere
Actually one thing I didn’t mention was how spectacular the service was.
Waters were always refilled, plates were changed, table was cleaned, dishes were coursed well (unlike leopardo lol) and server was always available without being ever present. Plus the server had recs and opinions, one of my biggest pet peeves is the “what do you like” and “everything is good” type servers.
