1 whole year!

This weekend my lovely boyfriend and I celebrated one year of dating. As a treat he took me to Othello's. All in all it was a lovely thought. However, the wonderfulness of celebrating the fact that somebody would put up with me for a year was rained upon by the poor service that we received.

I hate that this is my first post about a not-so-great dinning experience, but it had to come at some point.

Brian and I had never been to Othello's in Norman before so we were unsure as to the feel of this restaurant. It all started to go down-hill when we first walked in and were ignored by the girl at the front for at least 2 minutes. I actually had to ask her, "Umm, excuse me, do we seat ourselves?" Her college girl reply of "Oh my gosh, I totally didn't see you there!" was kind of irksome. No, "Oh, I'm so sorry, let me get you seated!"

I thought that this might just be a little snafu and let it pass. I took in my surroundings--dim lighting, intimate booth seating, and staff dressed in all black--immediately thinking that the restaurant might be a little bit fancy. Little did I know that paper napkins, and terrible service is what I was in for.

When we were seated we had a waiter that seemed like a super enthusiastic guy, so enthusiastic that he forgot to tell us his name. I assume Othello's doesn't have any specials because we were not told of any.  Once our nameless waiter finally came back with our water (hardly any ice on the sweltering evening) he asked us for our order.  Brian being  the person that he is asked if he could have the gnocchi as an entree instead of the "side" with alfredo sauce and chicken. You would have thought he had asked the waiter to hang the moon for all the questions he got back on how this could possibly be what Brian wanted. I didn't want to confuse the poor guy any further so I went for the simple cheese ravioli with red sauce and chicken.

Being as it was our 1 year anniversary, we decided that we would order a bottle of wine with our dinner. So, I asked our waiter, "What would you suggest as a pairing for either his or my meal?"
"Uhhh... wine? Ah, man, I don't know. This is the second time I've been asked that this week, I've never been asked that before. I donno, man, like, a white..."

Gee, thanks, dude.  Good thing I have an idea of what whites I like. I knew I didn't want to go too dry or too sweet. I'm looking at the wine list trying to decide, and the waiter says, "Maybe the Sauvignon Blanc?"  Brian, knowing that I would over analyze took the wine list, said, "GREAT! We'll have a bottle."
"A bottle?"
"Yeah, a bottle."
"Uh, okay, I'll get that right out."

Now, I'm not an expert on pairing wines, so I couldn't tell you that the wine paired perfectly with the meal, but it was a pretty decent wine... when we got it.

"Do you want me to open it for you? Should I pour it in your glass?"

Really? You ask us those questions? Really?

Finally when we got our meals I was ready to devour some ravioli. I can tell you that my chicken was not well trimmed, and the sauce had decent flavor, but was runny. When I tried Brian's gnocchi it was too chewy and his alfredo sauce was more like soup. We had to ask twice for our bread which was nice and soft on the inside with a decent crust, but was like eating plain white Wonder Bread, absolutely no flavor.

I would have assumed that the lack-luster service was standard practice until I realized that the two older couples around us seemed to have spectacular service, Zach, our waiter, told his name to the couple behind us, got them their drinks quickly, suggested meals for them, was all around treating them much better than he treated Brian and me.

All of this finally culminated when we had to wait over 25 minutes for our check to be brought out, picked up, and the receipt given to us to sign. I can only hope that the wait was caused by a glitch in the system. 

After having a meal that was lacking in more than one area, I will say this; the only Italian that I will be eating in Norman from now on is Victoria's.