York Lanes is different this year. Restaurants opening, moving, renovating—these changes provide a refreshing vibrancy to this critical hub of student life. Naturally, all the change has drawn a crowd, including my girlfriend and I. We treated ourselves to a dinner at Cucinetta on its opening day to see what it hasdto offer.
You can’t miss the tornado of scarlet rope and incandescent lights hanging above Cucinetta. The clean slate, crisp red walls, and repurposed wood dovetail agreeably with its Italian menu, which is readily available for your viewing pleasure as a row of tapestries in the line-up area. An elegant touch.
My girlfriend orders the margherita pizza and I decide on the pomodoro pasta. We wait about 15 minutes. The kitchen is in plain view from the register so I busy myself by following the banter of the chefs and servers. While I like the trust this engenders, it exposes customers to any hiccups in the service.
After five minutes, a chef slides a plate of pasta onto the shelf separating the kitchen from the dining room. Every so often a server asks who the plate is for and gets silence in return. Eventually, a server hoists the plate and questions every other staff member to find out who the pasta belongs to. As I have been suspecting for 10 minutes, it is mine. Thankfully, I’m the only one who’s had to wait. My girlfriend’s pizza arrives promptly and without any confusion.
Food in hand, we sit down to eat, and immediately feel conflicted about our two very different dishes. I’m underwhelmed — the pasta is oily, bland, and undercooked. A minute or so shy of al dente, it is edible but not at all enjoyable. Even if I did enjoy it, the portion is too small to be satisfying.
My girlfriend, on the other hand, gushes over her Roman-style pizza.
The dough is light and lets the other flavours do most of the work as they should. The sauce is spread thin but packs a punch — impressive quality for just a dollar more than a TTC fare.
Our fellow patrons are also actively comparing their food, and their opinions seem just as polarized. I scan the room and for every content smile, I see a frown of disappointment, under each of which there seems to be a pasta dish. The person next to me devours his veggie pizza, and I understand why. Everything looks fresh and expertly prepared.
So why does my pasta look like it was scraped from a can?
I’m rooting for Cucinetta—I want better places to eat on campus, and Cucinetta seems to provide a shade of elegance that isn’t found anywhere else, but only in potential. But I paid seven dollars for three-dollar pasta even the staff members didn’t want to touch. I’d be glad to see them put as much effort into providing a consistent dinner as they have into making the place look pretty.
Jessia Arsenio
Contributor
