Mommas Citi Cucina - ENGLISHTOWN

Placing my reservation online was quick and easy. I was able to add a note that one of our party of four was having a birthday. The server saw a birthday card we gave our friend and even commented on it. We ordered two appetizers: stuffed mushrooms and calamari. They gave us 5 mushrooms of various sizes and they were quite delicious. I thought the portion of calamari was a bit small for 4 people and lacked flavor to the point that I had to add salt. I was a bit disappointed not to see some kind of seafood fra diavolo on the menu but ordered a similar dish of shrimp, clams, mussels, and squid ink linguini, which was quite food and filling. My wife enjoyed a pasta with pears and walnuts. When the restaurant is full, it's quite noisy, especially when you have a table in the middle of the floor like we had. But I was most disappointed that the server did not pay attention to the birthday note I added to the reservation, especially when he was had served a cake with a candle and sang happy birthday to two other diners having birthdays on either side of us. I mentioned this at the front desk, but all I received was a weak apology and told I should have mentioned it to the server. Sorry, but he already knew. For a bill exceeding $220 for a party of 4, I think there should have been more attention to detail to make the patrons happy. In summary, it was a different dining experience but I doubt I'll go back. For me, I think it's better to dine at a smaller place that tries harder.

Delicious. Great atmosphere. Solid food and selection. Everything perfectly cooked. The waitress really made the visit

Very good food and service. A little pricey but worthwhile. A very memorable eating experience.

By looks of the place and looks of the menu, it seemed we would get some great classic Italian food. We decided to do family style for five people and had a pretty limited choice in entrées. We explained to the waitress that we were both vegetarian however the other three members of our party were not. We asked her if we could get the dish that was heavy in vegetables and we would just pay the difference to add it to the family style selection and she said no. OK, moving on, so we ordered the linguine Alfredo figuring it was a safe choice, we had no idea exactly how safe it actually was! First off this thing was made with spaghetti, I have never seen linguine Alfredo made with spaghetti but I thought hey a noodle's a noodle will get over it. And then we taste of it... Zero zilch zip flavor. In fact it didn't even seem as if it had any sauce on it at all and needed so much help that it wasn't even worth the bother. It needed me to go home and make some Alfredo sauce and add to it is how much help it needed. Our second dish was eggplant rollatini because we can't get that in Seattle. The sauce tasted worse than a jar sauce there was no seasoning to it whatsoever and there was only the smallest amount of ricotta within the rules for themselves. No mozzarella cheese on top and we had to ask 3 times for Parmesan cheese. The only thing positive I can say about the rollatini was that they took the time to take the bitterness out of the eggplant or the restaurant supply they purchased the pre-made rolls did). Anyway, onto dish three; we got the pasta Primavera. There was a decent amount of vegetables in it although the whole dish was very greasy and again lacking seasoning which I just don't understand Italian food how you can completely sidestep the beautiful seasonings you have at your disposal to use. The fourth dish was chicken marsala and as the fact that we don't eat meat we were not able to judge it but the other people at the table weren't very impressed. There were five people and a little one at the table And they gave us one small plates of bread when we first arrived. They never offered to fill it up they never offered to ask how everything was or if we needed anything else. We had to remind the waitress that our family style meal came with a family style desserts and she said oh yes it does, but it only comes with the mini sampler dessert plate which was super mini. And for very small cannolis, a couple lemon squares and a couple indescribable items that none of us ate. All in all a pretty bad meal with a very high price tag. So disappointing that we can't even go to the East Coast to get good Italian food. Oh the salad that came with the meal was OK I guess, nothing special just not bad. So many places to eat but unfortunately after having a little one with us we could not eat anywhere in New York due to vaccination rules for kiddos. We will never go back to this place again. Lesson learned

The appetisers meals are fantastic. We've been there a few times NEVER had a bad meal. The only critique was desert. It was too sweet for me but everything else was great. I will continue to there recommend it to everyone.