Monti's La Casa Vieja

Kristi:

Yesterday, our office had a lunch outing at Monti's in downtown Tempe (on the corner of Mill Ave & Rio Salado Pkwy). There were 11 of us, and we had made a reservation.

Everyone in our group except for myself and 1 other person had been to Monti's before. I was really excited to try it out. It seems like everyone and their brother have been to Monti's, considering it's been there since the beginning of time. The place is a lot bigger inside than I expected. It's kind of dark and dungeon-y, but I guess that's part of the charm. The hostess led us through the restaurant to a room near the back...or I guess it could be the front if you come through the back door :P

I was happy to see that we were going to have 2 servers for our group. They were very friendly with a welcome splash of humor. Our beverages came quickly after ordering them (it seemed like we alternated between iced tea and diet coke around the table - and they gave us pitchers for self-serve refills). One person in our party ordered some fried zucchini for appetizers for all of us to share. They came out about 10 minutes after we got our drinks. I love fried zucchini, but I only had 1 piece because I didn't want to spoil my lunch (read: make a pig of myself). It was good...hot and crunchy, and not greasy. It came with ranch for dipping, but it had more of a consistency of mayonnaise. The server also brought us baskets of their roman bread. I'm not supposed to eat bread (rules of the lapband), but I had to try it because it had rosemary on it, and I LOVE rosemary. It was delicious! Pre-lapband, I probably would've eaten a whole basket of it. I must say, it was the highlight of the meal.

The server(s) took our orders, and it took a disappointing 40 minutes to receive our lunches. Not good when you're on your lunch HOUR from work. I had ordered the 5 ounce filet mignon and chose the onion rings as my side ($9.95). I ordered my steak medium, but it came out well done. Ick. Unfortunately, three others in our party also had overcooked steaks. We didn't say anything to them at the time because it took us so long to get our food in the first place that we wouldn't have had time for them to cook us new steaks. Even if my steak would have been cooked as I had ordered it, it was just ordinary. I wasn't impressed. I've had better steaks at a chain restaurant.

I understand that when you have 11 people in the party that it's difficult to cook the food so that it's all up at the same time, but the cook obviously didn't know the meaning of "carry over cooking". When the check was presented, one of us asked to speak to the manager. When the manager-on-duty came to our table, the problem with the steaks was brought up. He asked us if we had told the server when he came back to check on us, and we said no and explained our time crunch. The MOD basically chastised us for not bringing it up at the time we discovered the problem and basically said "what do you want me to do about it now". We brought it up mostly to let them know that the cook needs some more practice at getting steaks off the grill in time. We weren't looking for a free lunch. He graciously took $2 off each of the 4 steaks that were overcooked.

Oh! And I have to mention that we had one vegetarian in our group. At the time we were placing our orders, she asked what the soup of the day was (chicken noodle and split pea). She asked if there was meat in the split pea, and the server said no. So she ordered the soup/salad/bread combo with the split pea. When she got her soup, she noticed right away that it had ham in it. Last I checked, ham was meat. She excused herself from the table and went to hunt down the server and asked again about the soup because she swore she saw ham in it. The server then said that yes, there was ham in it....and would she like the chicken noodle instead? Seriously? She declined, and they took the soup off the bill. I shared my onion rings with her so she wouldn't starve.

Needless to say, I was disappointed with my first visit to historic Monti's and will most likely not return. I'm sure they have hundreds of other satisfied patrons though, so my lack of business isn't going to put them out of business.

I give Monti's 3 out of 5 filets.