I was here for dinner last night with friends for Winterlicious and we were really disappointed. It looks so charming from the street and I'd read great reviews about the food, but our experience was not good.

The restaurant was bustling when we arrived, so we figured we had made a good choice. When it took 15 minutes for our server to acknowledge our friend who arrived minutes after we did, I started to wonder. The service was exceptionally slow. We had to flag down a separate server to get bread and our food took so long to arrive, I wondered if they had forgotten our order.

When the food finally came, it was... not good. The spinach salad with figs, grilled apples and prosciutto (I had mine without the pork), was very bland. It had hardly any dressing on it and at one point I bit on something very unpleasant (anise?) and had to spit it into my napkin. The naked spinach and ricotta ravioli in butter sauce was very disappointing. When I order ravioli, I expect I will be eating pasta. There was no pasta. "Naked" literally meant spinach and ricotta balls with no pasta, soaked in butter. It didn't taste like fresh spinach either. It tasted like frozen spinach that had been thawed, heated, rolled in a ball with a bit of ricotta, and soaked in a cup or so of butter. I only ate a few balls before losing my appetite.

Dessert was great, but by that point it couldn't save the meal.

The final blow came with the bill where they had taken the liberty of including a tip for themselves for our table of 3. One of my friends mentioned that it said on the menu that tips would be included with every meal (regardless of group size) but I hadn't noticed that. Given our bad experience we would not have tipped as generously as they made us. I find it offensive that they'd be so presumptuous as to add a tip on all tables. I can understand larger groups because not everyone tips properly and the server can end up really short changed, but to force it on all tables is not reasonable. The amount you tip should be your discretion, based on service. The fact that our server didn't have to work for her tip, explains a lot.

My portion of the bill for the winterlicious menu mineral water tax and imposed tip was $54.