The friend I don't get to see often has been hitting me up more than usual this year. I meant, it went from once every 2 years to this year's 4th summon, you would think something was up, lol... Anyway, slave girl and I wanted to impress her so we picked Rossoblu.
We parked on the street since it was free after 6 pm. The neighborhood could look scary especially all the surrounding shops closed early, but we didn't encounter anything unpleasant.
Our reservation was at 7:45 pm. The host was welcoming and our server was friendly but not very useful. We were promised a cocktail menu since our friend doesn't drink wine, the menu never came until I asked for it way later because I couldn't find our server. Throughout the night, I saw water were refilled at other tables but I self served most of the night. Once our water jar was empty, there was a long delay before we got our 2nd jar. Maybe it was a busy night, but the service did not live up to the 20% default service charge.
For our cocktails, friend got Sogni D'oro Golden Dreams that had bourbon, prosecco, cream, honey, and club soda. Me and slave girl both got bartender's choice. Mine had rum, mint, cucumber, lime juice, and hers had vodka, grapefruit, lemon. All the drinks were tasty and refreshing. They have happy hour from 5-7 pm daily and based on our drinks, their bar is definitely glowing.
For the food, we wanted to share our food family style and I was put in charge to order. I picked grilled Morro Bay oyster, marinated big eye tuna, Nonna's tagliatelle al ragu bolognese, maltagliati, crispy rainbow trout, crisp kennebec potatoes, and beef shortrib stracotto.
Grilled oyster had brown butter, sage, parmigiano reggiano, lemon, and breadcrumbs over the oyster. It was tasty but sadly, reggiano was the only thing I could taste. Oyster didn't provide too much flavor other than its texture. I think the star of the dish was the cheese, not the oyster.
I didn't understand the big eye tuna at all. It had heirloom beans, charred frisee, pickled mustard seeds, and crisp shallots. Flavor was overpowered by the fried shallots and I couldn't tasted the tuna marinate at all. The texture was a blur with tuna and soft boiled beans mashed together. Beans provided no flavors either, so unless I was missing something, this was a total fail dish to me.
Nonna's tagliatelle al ragu bolognese had beef and pork tomato sauce in the pasta. Tagliatelle was beautifully made. It was thin and almost al dente, good job wherever that came from since I didn't see anyone making it in the open kitchen. The sauce was good, but too bland for my taste. I asked for salt and chili flakes and it became pretty amazing after I sprinkled them on.
Maltagliati was fantastic! It had porcini and pioppini mushrooms, dandelion greens, and sage. No meat at all and the flavor was out of this world! If you come here for one thing only, this is it.
Crispy rainbow trout was fried really well. They even went as far to open the fish and de-bone it. My issue was, if you already have the fish open, why not season the fish at the same time? The fish was so bland when it came to our table. The tomato aioli thing was ok, but it was more on the sweeter side and I didn't care for it. Good thing I already had salt and chili flakes on the table...
Crisp kennebec potatoes were awesomely fried but sadly it was cut waaaay too big to maintain the crispy texture on every bite. In this case, bite size would be preferred, and I also found one potato that was never fried in our plate with normal skin.
Beef shortrib was table's worst. Originally I wanted to order milk braised pork shoulder, but they ran out around 8 pm. Did every table order pork shoulder since the restaurant opened at 5:30? Anyway, we took our server's suggestion and got beef shortrib. The flavor was all off with artichoke, and the center of the shortrib was very chewy. I felt like I was eating chunk roast and it was totally a waste of money. I do not recommend this to anyone.
For dessert, we decided to go with honey peach mascarpone gelato and caramel apple sorbetto. I wasn't too impressed with them to begin with, then my friend pulled a piece of paper out of her mouth after a bite of gelato. Oh man, she was so pissed...
At the end of the night, the desserts were taken off from the bill, but I was ashamed to pick this place to impress my friend. Don't get me wrong, they had one good pasta dish so it wasn't 100% fail. But based on the whole experience with the price we paid, I would probably go back to my favorite Italian place in the art district in the future.
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