I made my first visit to Sambuca Grill and Bar on Penn Ave. in Scranton on Friday night (8/24). I had heard positive things about the food and was looking forward to meeting up with some friends and enjoying a good meal. Alas, were it not for the company of my very engaging pals, dinner would have been a dull affair. To be fair, my main course, rigatoni with a bolognese sauce was nicely done. But a general inattention to detail and wait staff that seemed disengaged from any real interest in the food and drink put an early damper on expectations. One of our drink orders was bungled and not corrected. The bread was stale.
I ordered a Sambuca Salad and received a house salad. (Perhaps I’m nitpicking here, but maybe it would be a good idea to call the house salad the Sambuca salad since that is, after all, the name of the restaurant.) I stuck with the salad I was brought. It was a simple plate of mixed greens, tomato and red onion dressed with feta cheese, olive oil and red wine vinegar. These kinds of simple salads can be really wonderful when they’ve been constructed with care, but this one was off the mark. The vinaigrette was tasteless and the tomatoes (at the height of tomato season in NEPA!) were ice cold and underripe. Refrigerated tomatoes simply do not belong in a salad coming out of good kitchen.
It’s worth repeating that my pasta entree was good. But for a restaurant that earned such high praise in its first year, this dining experience was, on the whole, just not good enough.
Sambuca Grill and Bar, 234 Penn Ave., Scranton 570-961-5205
Fresh back from nine days in the U.K., I launch my latest foray into blogging and my return to writing about food. Two days in London and seven in Edinburgh were restorative in the best sense—a time to connect with my husband Mark in holiday mode, to reunite with our friend Susan, and to be part of a fortuitously well-matched group of seven Americans sharing a flat in Edinburgh.