Maddalena Restaurant, San Antonio Winery

So last Friday the company decided to give us another fully paid off day, and I decided to do lunch at the San Antonio Winery, and also shop for some decent wine. Z wanted to come, B and E were claiming to be too poor to eat, and well, their lost.

It wasn't too difficult to find, even though I have never met so many Sunday drivers on a Friday before... We got their about 2:30pm. They had their own secluded street, which I thought was pretty awesome. Decent size parking lot within their gated area. We went in and the first thing we saw was their retail area, and I immediately got attracted to their bottle of Château Margaux...for only...$1200.00....and I was completely transfixed and just could not move or take my eyes off it.... ok so we finally broke me away from that security area and we went into their restaurant area.

Taking a minute to recover, I recomposed myself, at first you would think this is a cafeteria, and in a way, it was.... they didn't have a menu. They had instead 2 tables, each table has about 12 dishes, one table is bread/sandwich products, the other is rice/pasta/dishes. Each dish has a name tag on it, you find what you like, then walk up to the kitchen counter and tell the clerk what you want. The clerk then takes note, and hands you a menu stand with a piece of paper labeling what you had ordered. You then scoot down to the cashier area, and pick your drinks, regular stuff, pre pour glasses of wine...water....etc. Then you pay for your meal, and a waiter carries your tray and escorts you to a table.

The restaurant itself is Italian in design, and they had a musician there playing at almost 3 in the afternoon. They also have segmented out rooms for events, be it company event, or wine tasting that they host...etc. All meals were served with salad and bread, but we didn't get to choose any dressing for our salad. The bread was ehh...whatever... I am and will never be a bread eater anyway...

We both had pinot noir, though I knew I should have had pinot grigio since I ordered Linguini shrimp scampi. Z had fresh Salmon breaded and served with rice. The waiter brought our dishes over, and I got stunned as soon as I had my first bite, it was that good! It wasn't a good thing though as I had my first bite right when the musician finished his tune, and I was so stunned that I didn't even applaud, and my table was closest to the musician... embarrassing.

The linguini was perfectly al dente(unlike macaroni grill), and the shrimps were not over cooked(unlike Water's Restaurant), the flavor was perfectly balanced, strong garlic but not overly salty, very well done and very Italian. Z's eyes lite up with she tasted the salmon, I personally dont eat cooked fish so I cant tell you how good it is, but she did finish her plate.

Overall

Parking ******************************A, come on, free gated parking in LA always gets an A

Environment *************************A-, very cool place, their is only 2 problems I found with this place, one they don't open late enough, close at 7pm...come on.... and two, selection menu is pretty small compare to other places.


Service ******************************A++!!! Friendly servers, and not just the restaurant, but over all everyone there, even the retail wine area where they had a wine waiter serving samples. As I was drooling again after the meal in front of that bottle of Château Margaux, someone came by and asked if I needed help, so I asked if they had Alter Ego de Palmer(sorry that's the highest I have tried in my short wine life), he wasn't sure and went away. I then went to the taster counter and started picking out daily wines to try, as I was doing this, that guy who asked me earlier came back, hunted me down with a supervisor and asked me to repeat the name, just to confirm that they truly didn't have it. The supervisor knew what it was and confirmed that they don't have it. But it is exactly this kind of service that I do not expect in the US, if this was Japan I would expect nothing less. That's my little story of why they made A++ on service.

Food********************************A-, bread...spread...whatever, salad was average, but the dishes...omg! Go there and try for yourself, you wont regret it.

Drinks*******************************A, its a winery after all!!!

Price ********************************B. Expect about 22-25 bucks a person with food and drink and tip

Overall*******************************I am giving this place an A, and they can definitely expect more business from me!