Satisfactory Service at Serafina

Last Friday, the girls and I went out for a much needed night out.  We decided Serafina would be the spot to update each other on our lives or as Alex likes to call it, “drinks and a love fest”.  With two of the four of us commuting, we decided to hit up the location in Times Square, on 49th and 8th in the Time Hotel.

We snagged a booth for the four of us and decided to opt for a bottle of pinot grigio since it was the cheapest white wine available and much cheaper than purchasing by the glass (bottle $29, glass $9).  Wine was fine, I’m the type of person who enjoys boxed wine so I can’t honestly tell if it was good or not.  We also decided to split a tomato and mozzarella appetizer.  It was good, not like a lot of work goes into tomato and mozz, but still, delicious.

For dinner, I ordered lobster ravioli in a lobster bisque sauce.  Ravioli was good, it was especially wonderful to dip the bread into the sauce.  I sampled the other dishes as well – spinach ravioli in a sage/butter sauce (Sorry Colleen, but my least favorite dish), the “special risotto” with truffle oil which was delicious, but a little heavy, and the chicken marsala, which was perfectly cooked.  

While the food was good, it was the service that turned me off.  First, when dipping our bread in the olive oil, we requested parmesan.  It never came out.  Also, we finished the olive oil super quickly, but no one came by with a refill, even though we still had a hunk of bread left.  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when we didn’t receive a refill of bread either, and had to request it so we had something to dip into the sauce.  Another thing that drove me crazy was at dinner, three of us received our meals, and then we all had to wait for Dory’s chicken to come out.  I try to be somewhat polite at dinner and not eat until everyone has their food. This resulted in several of us having cold meals.  I would have preferred my dish sit in the kitchen under a heating lamp, rather than getting cold out in front of me.  Finally, when our pasta dishes came out, Alex asked for some parmesan on hers, but the server ignored her, but sprinkled cheese on my dish and Colleen’s.  When Dory’s dish came out, Alex asked for it again, yet we were ignored.  I’m not sure if the server was anti-parmesan or what, but it was annoying.

The food at Serafina was good, but not good enough to mask the taste of bad service.  While it was a convenient place for us to meet up, I’d prefer to try someplace else next time.