A Little Bit About a Lot of Things

I am an Italian food snob. Well I’m an all around food snob, but I am especially picky about my Italian food. The sky is the limit on the amount of money I would spend on great bowl of pasta. Meanwhile, I digress. While I love great Italian food, I find that most people like mediocre Italian food-or they will settle for it. I think that Papa Razzi’s is a great place to go if you’re meeting up with a bunch of friends and just want to enjoy a night out-the foods decent-so why not?

The have a bunch of locations. This was my first time at the Framingham location-I have to admit that because of the location, I never really noticed it there-tucked away in a corner off of route 9. I also have to admit that the service that I’ve received at the Chestnut Hill location hasn’t been great. When I was there, there was a  blond hair in my dinner-and the waitress actually tried to tell me that it wasn’t from them-that no one in the kitchen had blond hair, or hair for that matter, they were all ‘big bald guys’-so it must have come from me…which would be difficult since I have jet black hair. What did she think, I carry around spare hair in my purse and slip it into my dinners so I can get free food? Unlikely.

So we arrive at dinner on a Monday night at around 7:30-there’s a decent crowd and some kind of party going on in a private room off the main dining room. We are greeted by someone other than our waiter, another server, who explains that she doesn’t know where our waiter is, so she is going to get us started. We order beverages and are given home made bread. Our waiter comes over and takes our order. We have appetizers, minestrone soup($2.99) and  melanzana fritta ($7.99) (fresh eggplant lightly breaded  and sauteed, topped with ricotta cheese, garlicky tomatoes and fresh greens) . My dining companion is presented with the smallest cup of soup she has ever seen and swore that they said that there was chicken in the soup but can’t seem to find any. We ordered our main dishes, an insalata di campo with chicken and the bolognese that comes as spaghetti but I ordered it with rigatoni. I have this weird thing that I don’t like eating spaghetti or long strands of pasta in public, it can get a little messy, that’s why I stick with the rigatoni shapes for less mess.

Our dinners are dropped and the waiter leaves before we can say anything. My dining companions salad that she ordered dressing on the side, came with it on top and my dinner came with spaghetti instead of the rigatoni. We look around and can’t seem to catch anyone’s eye so we eat what was placed in front of us. When the waiter does come around, we have already eaten half our meals. I didn’t want to say anything, I don’t usually like to make a fuss, but my dining companion points out the mix ups. Our waiter says he can bring them out back and get us new ones, but the thought of having to wait another 15 minutes for the right meals seems a bit much for us. The food was decent-the pasta was properly cooked and the sauce was decent but nothing to write home about. It was more like a meat sauce than a traditional bolognese. The food just didn’t stand up to this food snobs high standards.

Papa Razzi

http://www.paparazzitrattoria.com/

155 Worcester Rd
Framingham, MA 01701

Tags: bolognese, italian, restaurant