La Famiglia
8 South Front Street
Philadelphia, PA
19106
Restaurant week always has its up and downs for me. There
are some places not worth going to because you can get the meal that they offer
for the same price all the time, and there are some places that succumb to
terrible mediocrity when the pressure of restaurant week arrives. Some places
are just as good as they always are and the only thing that changes is the
price of the food. Those are the type of places that I am looking to find, and
unfortunately I made a bad choice for the first week of restaurant week in the fall
of 2012. My girlfriend, her sister, and two of her friends from work and I
headed to La Famiglia in Old City on a Friday night in hopes of a great Italian
meal.
Once we all arrived and were seated, we all ordered some
wine and perused the menu. Our waiter was very nice, and enjoyed flirting with
all the women at the table, but he would become more and more nonexistent as the
meal went on, so unfortunately for him, his tip suffered because of it. We all
made our choices, some people switching because the waiter told them they were
ordering too much starch, and we sat back and waited for our food to arrive. I
had ordered the lasagnette for my appetizer, a small portion of lasagna. It was
the best part of the meal for me. The pasta was very tender, and the sauce and
meat were dispersed nicely throughout. The sauce was very tasty.
The mushroom and mozzarella risotto was a severe
disappointment for me. I thought it was going to be spectacular, but it was
really not good. It wasn’t creamy or cheesy, and there was next to no mushrooms
or sausage in it. It honestly tasted like regular old rice cooked in chicken
stock. I was really disappointed by this.
I thought the idea of the dessert sampler that they offered
was great, but the execution was pretty poor. Only one of the desserts on the
tray was good, and the other two were pretty bad. One tasted purely of the alcohol
used in it, which I believe was Kahlua, and the other was just a pile of mush
with a fruit topping. The one that was good was like a little mini cheesecake.
It was light and fresh, and had a really nice bite to it from the raspberry
sauce that it had on top.
One pint for La Famiglia. The food just was not as good as it was hyped up to be. I know it was restaurant week, but the quality could not change that drastically, especially because they were not even really busy. I will say that the owner or manager, whomever it was, was
very accommodating when we asked to split our check. That was a plus, but the
waiter had so badly fumbled in the handling of our table, and the food was so
incredibly mediocre, that I can't recommend this place to you in good
conscience. If you do happen to try it, please let me know your thoughts. But
it definitely isn’t worth your time or money in my opinion. Cheers!
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