Earlier this month, my weakness for pretty menus got the best of me and a friend, and we ordered from Sicily Italian Family Restaurant.
Don’t let this happen to you. Don’t be drawn in by the wide variety of dishes, coupons, and decent prices. It’s just not worth it.
Why? For starters, there was the service.
After being on hold for 10 minutes and taking another 10 to slowly spell out and disentangle the order for the operator, we were given the “45 minutes to an hour” line. An hour and 15 minutes after that call ended, we received a call from an operator in the security office at some other business with the name Guilford in it, using profanity and screaming at us for ordering food to be delivered there.
We politely began to explain that we were quite sure we had said, “Guilford College,” when the operator handed the phone to the lost deliveryman, who promptly picked up an attitude, telling us to “calm down,” and that he would be at my place shortly.
I would like to add, for the record, that this restaurant is located on West Friendly Avenue.
Two hours and four calls requesting driving directions later, the deliveryman showed up at my door with a bag we later realized contained only half the order. Sure, we could have called and demanded to be compensated for the missing items we had paid for, but that would have involved dealing with the employees there again, and that just wasn’t going to happen.
Small price to pay for good food though, right? Wrong. In fact, everything on the menu can be roughly translated to, “overpriced crap.” Here are some examples of how this linguistic conversion works:
When the menu says, for example, “chicken scallopini,” it actually means, “leathery chicken swimming in oil and seasoned with some very suspicious-smelling herbs for $8.50.”
When you see, “eggplant parmigiana,” what it means is, “overcooked eggplant, injected with oil, on top of a bed of overcooked pasta, and seasoned with some very suspicious-smelling herbs for $8.50.”
And the front of the menu, which reads, “New York Style Pizza & Italian Cuisine,” can be loosely translated as, “bad food covered in very suspicious-smelling herbs.” (Look, all I’m saying is that these “spices” smelled a whole lot like something that a whole lot of students here would pay a whole lot of money for.)
So, would I recommend this restaurant?
Sure, if you have lots of spare time and cash and are looking for something to complain about. The food blows and the service is worse. If you happen to come across a menu in the front lobby of Founders Hall or one of the dorms for Sicily Italian Family Restaurant, I implore you, run.