Critic's Review
There was something very fishy about this place. 200+ reviews, almost all of them 4-5 starts. Place is a little storefront, and from the pictures of the food you can tell that they have a strange idea about how to make Italian food. Could yelpers collectively be that stupid? I set out to find out The Truth myself.
Aside from the rosy Yelp reviews, there's something very shady about the business itself. In researching the business, I found that the company operating here , Sosta Caffe LLC has no authorized persons associated with the business, and have not filed an annual report in 2015. There's a Manager Dissociation for Chahir Geraigiri, leaving no members or managers remaining, which should effectively dissolve the LLC. But, "Chahir aka Chad" still owns the website, and based on the pictures on Facebook, I saw him and his wife Maria in the restaurant!
So you form a business, get a Restaurant Food Service and 2COP wine and beer license, resign from the company and then continue to operate it? Sounds like a formula for trouble with the DBPR, AB&T, State of Florida, Florida Dept of Revenue and the IRS.
The entire point of registering businesses and getting licenses is Accountability. Who is accountable when the licensee is a questionable business entity with nobody associated with it?
(NOTE: This has been corrected since the review. The company is now in good standing).
Enough fun stuff, now for the Review:
So I went to this place not knowing the info above. I got to Sosta Caffe a bit after 2pm, with expectations of a friendly cafe with doting service. It was 93 degrees, so eating outside wasn't an option.
Inside there was a family of 4 (2 young children) eating out of wooden boxes; some people behind the counter, and a bunch of empty tables with napkin rollups. Nobody said a word, I just sat down and waited.
A girl awkwardly came over and gave me a menu; I was sitting right next to a shelf that had menus, dishes and salt and pepper shakers. I immediately noticed that higher prices than ones I'd seen online. Their website has a menu with no prices
I order a small Pelligrino and ask for a lime. "We only have blood orange", the girl says. Say What? "You don't have limes?". "Oh, you want a lime. No, we only have lemon". Ok, well now what I wanted, but what choice do I have. It comes out with a dried out slice of lemon that looked like it was probably sliced on Friday. Useless for its intended purpose.
I order the eggplant parmesan for $10.99, and that's it. Each of the tables has a candle on it; I guess they light them at night? Why do restaurants leave candle's on the table during the day if they're not going to light them? They just take up space and they don't really look very nice.
The guy at the other table gets up and grabs a salt shaker from the shelf next to me.
A dude drops off some bread and walks away.
I didn't have a bread plate. No olive oil. I look around and grab a plate from the shelf. There's no olive oil available. No server to ask. The bread has some olive oil and rosemary brushed on it, but I really would have liked some olive oil.
Music here is hard core Italian: "Festival", "Farfellina"; reminded me of Mancini's without the comfortable seating. The girl comes over and drops the eggplant in front of me.
At first glance, I assumed that there was some eggplant under the tomatoes and cheese.
I kind of knew what I was getting here from the pictures I'd seen, but I had to see it for myself. $10.99 and no pasta and some slivers of bread. Not a very good value. I was trying to think of the time I had eggplant parm at Gran Forno Pronto on Las Olas. At least I got bread and olive oil there.
They loaded it up with the sawdust cheese to a point of ridiculousness. Good places give you a plate of cheese so you can put on however much you want, or if you want it at all. No freshly grated cheese offered here. No big glob of mozzarella on top either.
I sliced it to see what was going on underneath the mound of tomatoes. Lots of skin, no breading. It was just like layers of eggplant and cheese, Probably reheated since the cheese in the middle wasn't hot.
Traditionally, eggplant parmesan is a baked dish, although the only place that I can remember getting it baked was at Bravo, long before I started taking pictures (it wasn't very good). "Assembled" is fine, but this was just a mess. Maybe this is how they make it in the tenements of Palermo, but I can't say I like this version. It didn't taste bad, but the Italians I know are fussy about how smooth their sauce is; and I do prefer the eggplant peeled. There's much debate about peeling and breading
The eggplant was kind of mushy; I wonder if they even fried it? Frankly this seemed like a "half-baked" effort. Tomato sauce that's only half way there.
This picture gives you an idea of how much sauce was sitting on top of the eggplant. Too much sauce is bad.
I spread the tomato "sauce" to illustrate just how much of this dish was just a pile of tomatoes. Kind of ridiculous, and a waste.
It's like they have a big tub of tomatoes in the kitchen and they just ladle it over the eggplant. Good for covering up you food preparation.
As I was cashing out I hear the owner was talking about taking over the space next door and expanding. They should probably get their business papers in order before delving into that.
Conclusion
With La Juana Cubana the highest rated restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, you have to consider Yelp to be little more than entertainment, but it was obvious that there was something wrong here. I call this a bandwagon restaurant; yelpers are so desperate to 1) fit in and 2) convince themselves that they know something that they all just follow along. Wow, other people say this is good so I'd better like it also. While the food isn't bad, you could go to a nice, comfortable restaurant and get something similar for less money with much better service.
This place is not operated by people who know how to run a restaurant; they don't know how to serve people or how to make their guests feel comfortable. Putting bread on a table with no plate, pre-cheesing the pasta as if everyone likes their food the same. And the lack of extras gives the place a cheap feel; little slices of bread, no olive oil or freshly grated cheese. Heck, I couldn't even get a slice of lime for my sparking water.
I don't see why anyone would rave about this place any more than they would about a little pizzeria. This is more expensive and you can't get a slice; the only thing different here is the round tables.
