Went to Al Dente near Hope Estates on Wednesday. Highly recommended by friends who had a wonderful dinner there a few nights earlier. First let me say that we will give it another try next year, but here is our experience from Wednesday this week.

We were meeting our friends (one of them Jeannie of Shopndrop) at 6 p.m. but arrived at 5.50p.m. As the sign on the door said "open" we went in. Greeted after a couple of minutes by a gentleman who said "we are not open until 6, please go out and come back - you can go to the shop next door"!! Hmmm, not a very good start. We waited in the car and went back at 6. We were seated and then our friends arrived and after greeting each other Jeannie said they had arrived even earlier at 5.30 and were told also to go and come back. We both agreed that if we were not meeting each other we would have chosen to go somewhere else.

Some of the dishes ordered were tasty, but others very not so great i.e. caesar salad was very bland, the oso buco was in a rose sauce instead of the hearty tomato/onion/garlic sauce we are used to and the veal marsala that I ordered had no hint of marsala! The Vegan Antipasi (grilled veggies) was very good as was the buchetta.