"Swan song" for a once-great Italian restaurant.

We went out for dinner last night, taking young Miss C with us. We had been promising to take her to our once "one-and-only favorite" Italian restaurant. We used to eat there two or three times a week, before they moved from a cozy small restaurant to a much larger place. And, for the icing on top of the Italian cake, we always had the same waitress, our friend K. The owners moved to the new place last year, and it hasn't been the same since. (K no longer works there.)

And goodness knows, we've tried and tried to re-capture the magic of that place, but it's gone. Even 17-year-old C noticed it last night. She used to come with us to the "old" restaurant all the time, and she knows our friend K and the great service we always got there.

Even though the new restaurant is larger and more lavishly decorated, and even though the food is still delicious, the atmosphere is different and the cozy feeling is just gone, gone, gone. The wait staff is good, not great. And the biggest disappointment is the new china, believe it or not, which is so over-sized that it feels as if you're eating your meal out of a bathroom sink. Or a large white hub-cap. Huge, heavy, round white plates that make your sensibly portioned dinner look as if it's a baby-sized happy meal.

And while we're talking about portions... the portions of whatever you order are smaller, but the prices are higher. They have a larger restaurant now, which means a higher rent, which translates into higher prices. But for goodness sake, do they have to insult you with a tablespoon's worth of a vegetable side dish? And we remember the delicious home-made bread they used to serve. Now, the bread in the little basket is grocery-store air-filled white bread shaped into a loaf that they think looks like real Italian bread. Give me a blessed break. (As my Uncle Mino would say: "I wouldn't feed that to the birds.")

Both C and I left part of our meal, though, because we knew we were going to splurge on dessert. We asked the waiter to box-up what was left, and he brought our plates into the kitchen and came back with two to-go boxes neatly packed up in a plastic bag. Not until we got to our house did we realize that he didn't give us one drop of the delicious sauce that was left on our plates. Did we really have to tell him to save the sauce for us along with the meal?

To quote my Uncle Tony, as he said more than a few times while we were in Arizona: "There are people in this world who have the mentality of a mouse. A mouse!" Come to think of it, Uncle Tony only said that when we were in restaurants.

My husband and I had been to this restaurant a few times before since their move from the original location. Each time, we walked away a little disappointed in something, but willing to give it another try. Last night's dinner with C was the last "try." At the end of the meal when we asked C what she thought, about the new location, the decor, the dinner in general... her response was "I'll bet we can find some place better." And then she said "And anyway, what's with these plates?!"