Style Over Substance
At Il Mulino, over-the-top service can't compensate for underwhelming food

By Tom Sietsema
The Washington Post Magazine
Sunday, June 10, 2007

Pampering I like. Smothering, not so much.

To experience the difference between the two forms of service, all you have to do is book a table at Il Mulino in Washington, a new branch of a nearly 30-year-old Italian restaurant in New York that has spread its special brand of hospitality to eight other cities, including Chicago, Las Vegas, Orlando and even Tokyo.

The unsuspecting guest won't know what to make of all the food that flows his way, seconds after being seated. One moment, a tuxedoed server holding a craggy block of Parmesan is at your side, carving off a chunk of cheese and depositing it on a bread plate. A basket of warm garlic toast lands on the center of the table. Someone bearing tomato-piled bruschetta and chilled mussels shows up to further crowd the linen-covered landscape -- which is already dressed with coins of fried zucchini and spicy sausage.

"We're done. I'm full. Let's go," a friend jokes after she eats more than she intends to of the freebies that are a hallmark of Il Mulino (all of them). The arrival of actual menus is accompanied by a verbal recitation of -- is it 15? 30? -- dishes that the waiter wants you to know about. While I admire his memory skills, the presentation only challenges mine. Plus, I'm dubious about menus that run as long as Il Mulino's, which stretches to more than 80 dishes.

If you like veal, you'll want to order "Milano arugula." It's a veal chop that's been pounded thin enough to hide all the white on your plate, then breaded and sauteed to a lovely golden crisp. Decorating the surface of the meat is a lawn of chopped arugula, tomatoes and onion that gives each bite of warm veal fresh punch. Eating this dish makes me very happy. Knowing it has so little good company on the menu has the opposite effect.

Minor satisfactions abound. Thinly sliced eggplant wrapped around a quartet of white cheeses makes a pleasant introduction. Linguine with seafood is cooked to retain a little bite, and its seasoned red sauce delivers a nice kick. Lamb ragout makes a decent drape for fettuccine. And if it weren't for some unevenly cooked parts, chicken in a haze of garlic would probably merit a return visit from me; it's a pleasantly homey recipe. If the desserts go for baroque with berries, whipped cream, cookies and zabaglione, they're also crowd pleasers. Cheesecake and tartufo are the best of the bunch.

Much of the rest of the menu is just tedious. The $12 Caesar salad looks as if it were assembled yesterday, a problem made worse by its less-than-stellar dressing. A $70 Dover sole tastes only of lemon; at that price, you want the fish to sing the praises of the sea (or at least you want to remember it for more than its cost). Ravioli filled with minced porcini mushrooms hides beneath a thick blanket of truffle-speckled cream sauce; the dish would be better with a quarter of its rich cover. But it's a wiser choice than the gnocchi, a huge portion of leaden dumplings made less appetizing by a flat pesto. "This will help you lose weight," a dining companion said, as she pushed away the bowl. The wine list is a shallow document that plays up big-ticket Italian reds and offers no bargains that I can see. A modest prosecco is an immodest $40 a bottle.

The chef needs to have his salt shaker put under lock and key until he learns to taste his food before sending it out to the dining room. One night, dish after dish was sabotaged by an excess of sodium, starting with a bowl of chicken broth bathing meat-filled tortellini. Separated from their broth, the dime-size bites of pasta were fine. But the liquid prompted a colleague to put down his spoon in disappointment. "Lot's wife in a bowl," he declared, nailing the appetizer. The sauteed veal with artichokes that followed could have been Lot's wife's twin.

The room can't decide what it wants to be. Wrought-iron chandeliers, tapestries on the walls and a single fresh rose at each table signal that you're not eating at Olive Garden. But an enormous display of fruit, wine and more in the center of the main room is out of place, as if an Italian grocer had dropped by with a forklift's worth of product. Adding to the genteel hokiness is a soundtrack that occasionally serenades guests with the theme from "The Godfather."

I can understand why some people gravitate here. If the ever-smiling maitre d' got a dollar for every kiss and hug he doled out at the door, he could probably ditch his tuxedo and retire by now. Il Mulino's staff works hard to please. When a woman with bare shoulders complained about being chilly one night, a waiter returned with a table linen he had fashioned into a stylish shawl; only those of us who had witnessed the gesture knew it wasn't part of her ensemble. That's the point of truly good service: You don't notice it.

But good intentions sometimes go too far here. Four people in succession might ask you if you want pepper; the guy who brushes crumbs from the table spends long minutes doing so; and I had both a bottle of olive oil and a lemon half plucked from my fingers (!) when I tried to use them for my bread and calamari, respectively. I can squeeze my own lemon, thank you very much. (The tame fried calamari needs every drop, too.)

For the sake of comparison, I visited the original Il Mulino in Greenwich Village last month. I walked in to find the captain still dressing for the lunch shift at 12:30 ("Want me to come back? I teased as he adjusted his tie and put on his jacket. "What can I do for you?" he barked). The small, rather ordinary dining room featured wallpaper that could have been hung in 1981, the year the place set sail; a bunch of potted plants did their best to dress up the generic interior.

Just as in Washington, my table was soon overloaded with freebies, and just like back home, a gratis flavored grappa was dispensed from an iced vase at the meal's conclusion. New York's waiters looked bored and weren't nearly as engaging, however -- mine avoided all eye contact as he recited the endless menu -- and, while oversalting wasn't a problem, the sodden squash blossoms, listless Dover sole and oily vegetables had me wondering where I might head for lunch afterward.

As far as looks and spirit go, Washington's Il Mulino has its older sibling beat. But the restaurants share some unfortunate traits: prices that aren't justified by the cooking and posturing in the dining room at the expense of substance on the plate.