Floriana: No Fork For You! And a Rude Ass Beyouch of a Bartender

So the restaurants along 17th Street, Dupont aren't destinations, and especially not Floriana. They failed on so many fronts, and for the higher than usual price point for that part of the neighborhood, double thumbs down. But the most egregious of the offenses, which I will serve up first, was the b*tch-face bartender. Is it cause we're breeders, guy, that you ignored us when no one, NO ONE, was in the gross cellar bar, save for some fat, obnoxious slob whose jowls were hovered over his slop--looking up only to shout "shut the door" at us? Even when I approached the bar, sir mix-a-not was too busy watching the television and shaking up some green apple martinis.

So, that was the beginning of the sub-par experience. So we get seated, and were hopeful, as the menu looked pretty decent. In fact, we were walking by and stopped only because the menu looked so promising. We got a seat outside that beautiful evening after waiting for a bit in the dungeon of dolts. We wered greeted, thankfully, quite warmly by a young woman who seemed fairly knowledgeable and enthusiastic. But that was the only good about the experience. First came my starter, a salad of orange and fennel...what should have been a great combinationwas ruined by an overly-creamy dressing and listless fennel that had no taste and was more like biting into thinly sliced potatoes than the unctuous and liquorish bulb that I'm used to. So, after finishing (and when I say finish, I mean after four bites I put my fork and knife down), the table was cleared. BUT THEN, our server apologized and asked us to keep our utensils, handing me back my fork, as they ran out and couldn't replace them. No (new) fork for me. Grrr. I'm not that persnickety, but c'mon! The final straw was the sausage tortellini: too heavy, too bland, too chewy.

Oh, but I forgot the one minor bit of joy: a diner who sat behind us, brought along his two very large German shepherds, both with equally large personalities. Cute! (That is one good thing about this neighborhood, you can walk around with your dog and grab a bight to eat outside--but keep walking pass this place.)