Aria Kidding Me?

When restaurants are pretentious but serve up delicious food, I can look past it; however, when you serve me crap on a plate, I will have something to say about it. I'll let you guess which one Aria is. Walking in, I could already feel the pompousness in the air with the hostess' cold "welcome" and the half-assed handling of our coats. But the space is absolutely stunning and I've been wanting to eat here for a while, so I brush it off. The antipasti/fritti section has the usual suspects (burrata, house-cured meats, octopus, etc.), but the olive ascolane (lightly breaded and fried green olives stuffed with meat) caught my eye. I really wish it hadn't. With zero salt and meat that definitely needing marinating, I was appalled they were serving this. I was equally appalled when we asked our server about it and he confirmed that the meat wasn't marinated because the dish didn't need it. Um, server man, have you tasted this "dish"? We would be eating meat right off the cows if they didn't need seasoning. Thank god for wine.

After scouring through the extensive menu, we finally settle on the fiorentina for two, only to be told that they ran out. Shouldn't we have been told that when we received our menus or went through the specials? Server man then suggested the ribeye, so we asked what the difference was from the fiorentina with regard to preparation. He then proceeded to tell us what the difference was between a ribeye and a porterhouse! What an a-hole! In case you want to know, any steak can be prepared in the florentine style since it is grilled over a wood/charcoal fire and seasoned with salt and olive oil after the meat is cooked. What sets it apart is that the bistecca alla fiorentina meat is sourced from either the Chianina or Maremmana breed of cattle. And, no, the server didn't give us this information, Google did. After much back and forth, we got the paccheri di gragnano and the ribeye prepared in the florentine style accompanied with potato gratin and rapini.

The pasta had a good balance of basil, chillies, tomato and the fish ragu, but oh boy was it undercooked. I think that's a first for me! It also needed to be served with a bib since the sauce was so thin it was dripping everywhere. The ribeye, albeit cooked well, needed some sort of sauce or sides that were saucier. The rainbow chard wasn't anything special but the potato gratin with guanciale and thyme was quite good. All in all, meh. Off to desserts...

I always love me some panna cotta, but the texture of this panna cotta went horribly wrong. Tasteless and rubbery; even the roasted plums and pecan cake couldn't save it. We had never tried a bonet piedmontese before and my best description is that it is a cross between a panna cotta (we all know how that turned out) and a chocolate pudding. It was just okay; the dish as a whole was a bit disjointed and flat. I would normally never say this, but if you still really want to try Aria, wait until Summerlicious/Winterlicious. You'll probably still get subpar food but for much less. Also, there's a McDonald's down the street....just saying.