Dante's Fire

Super good food, drinks, atmosphere, and customer service. A little expensive though.

First time trying DF was not a very good experience.  Stood at the front door for awhile until someone acknowledged us (arrived for early dinner around 5:15 pm, but the staff was busy serving a large party in the back of the room).  Once seated, nobody came by our table to take our drink order.  By the time they did, we were hungry and elected not to order any drinks... just water.  About a 1/2 hour later we noticed more staff finally arriving to work.  During the evening we observed very poor to absolutely NO front of the house management and oversight.  It was a free-for-all... very disorganized.  All the servers/hostess were very friendly, but "believe it or not" OVERLY ATTENTATIVE.  We never knew eventally who our actual server was, first a girl who said she was helping out the male server, then the male server stopped by, then he got lost, then four other female servers or bussers stopped by to check on us.  We finally got some bread & butter delivered to our table.  No less than 5 staff members stopped to check on us within 3 minutes.  Everytime we went to take a bite of bread, someone was standing over us asking how everything was, explaining about the two different types of bread and butters, or asking if we need anything.  As the evening wore on it really became annoying, and when we did ask for something, an extra spoon for our cold cucumber soup (which we asked for when we ordered the item), or more butter, the person would disappear and not remember to bring us the item.... then 20 minutes later after we were done eating the shared bowl of soup, we got 4 or 5 spoons dropped off at our table.  When the bread was gone, they quickly dropped off more butter.  Very disorganized overly zealous service.  The bread was fresh, weird flavors (olive?)but the bread and butter were too "foo foo" for our liking.  The cold cucumber & brie soup was delicious... very different... but we waited a very long time for the soup to be brought to our table (without the extra spoon).  We could see it sitting up on the counter forever....   The entrees, although they had a nice presentation, took way too long also to be served to our table, and not served very hot, even as the line of servers/staff kept stopping by our table to check and chat with us.  The poached salmon with brie on top was a very skimpy serving of fish and a relatively bland taste.  Better to buy fresh salmon at the grocery store and cook it at home.  The entire fish dinner was nothing special, and the sides served with the entree were disappointing and not very generous portions.  We also ordered a steak dinner.... extremely small portion.  We specifically ordered it medium rare, but the beef came pre-sliced and well done.  When we ordered our dinner  we had asked for an extra plate & steak knife because we were going to split the two dinners, but we never got the extra plate or extra knife until we were done eating, but again, every time we went to take a bite of food, there was another server/staff member standing over us at our table asking if everything was okay.  Never heard of extremely "attentive" service being so annoying but with such slow service!   LOL  
We are not in a hurry to rush back and jump into Dante's Fire.

Started well with smiling friendly staff, a pleasant atmosphere and comfortable table, delightfully surprised by the unique house made breads and butters, got better with the perfectly balanced cocktails (including their "Frauds", great non-alcoholic options for the minor and expectant mother in my group), and finished strong with a round of entrees we all wanted to share around the table.

The only fault in the evening was ours... for including DF in a restaurant tour and thus only stopping in for main dishes.

We will be back!