Osteria Monte Grappa - Ojai, CA

This was my second visit to this cute little restaurant in Ojai. I had a fabulous experience the first time and it soon became my new favorite restaurant. Well, I decided why not try it again? Ok, here we go...

So we get seated almost as soon as we walk up to the restaurant. A measly table on the side of the building is ok with us. Our hostess does not give us menus and waitress has no idea that she is our waitress. I flag down a bus boy for some menus after sitting without anyone coming up to us for at least 15 minutes. The bus boy brought us menus, water, bread and then finally he took our drink order. The house Pinot was $12 a glass. Ouch! Our "waitress" finally made her way over to us after taking the order of a couple that came in after us - how annoying.

After waiting and waiting our food finally came. I ordered the Salmon and it was cooked to perfection. My compliments to the chef! The capers, the butter, the lemon - oh heaven!

And this my friends is the Soft Shell Crab. Scott ordered it thinking it sounded interesting. He has never had Soft Shell Crab before so he can't compare anything to it. I have, I order it at sushi all the time. In my opinion my local sushi joint does it up better than they do.

So we order dessert thinking, "Why the heck not?!" Probably one of the worst prepared creme brulee's I have had in awhile. The sugar crust was so thick it hurt my teeth. Then the custard filling was like soup! Oh my... So we flag down the gal that served us the dessert and tell her it is just terrible. Our "waitress" then comes over and tells us it is her favorite dessert and instead of offering something else just says I will take it off our bill. We were craving something sweet not that we didn't want to pay! Sheesh... onward.

So I don't know what to make of this situation. They were understaffed when we got there that is for sure. We were seated and no one "claimed" us as their table so the bus boy was our only help! A random girl served us our entrees, another random guy brought a second round of drinks and a girl in brightly colored pants brought the dessert. I am very disappointed because my first experience was so wonderful. On our bill we wrote a little note and I also left my blog address to even see if they cared enough to read about our experience. I am curious to see if it will get a response. Every restaurant has a bad night right? What do you think?