La Prima Trattoria, Portland, Oregon Restaurant Details

Food:

with the blinds down you can almost forget you're in a strip mall

Food:

We've been coming to this place off and on for years. It's an oasis in a suburb dearth of fine dining. Virtually every experience I have with La Prima Trattoria has been overwhelmingly positive...great food, tremendous service, exceptional value.

But tonight was just a poor experience. We sat in the bar, ordered off the happy hour menu, two pizzas, fries, beer and wine. Only no draft beer, their 'cooler broke'. Fine, bottle beer was just fine. But our pizzas took a year and a day. A lady who sat at the bar ten minutes after us had her pizza in her belly by the time ours came out. I inquired about it, but was given a bogus answer about cheese pizzas coming out faster. Come on. We were also told the fryer was never turned on, so our fries were late. Great, hold the fries, give us the pizzas first. When the pizzas did come, with the fries, there were holes in the pizza, meaning the crust wasn't laid out correctly. If there's holes in the dough, re-roll it. Don't try and excuse it as a crust. This place is MUCH BETTER than this. The fries were slathered with salt. Way too much salt and nothing near rosemary and parm. The server was informed of our salty fries and made mention of taking it off the bill, but didn't follow through.

Just a bad night, I hope. We love this place, but this is unacceptable, especially on a Friday night.