Cortese: The Follow Up...

After having a pleasurable experience with Cortese pizza I decided to go back for a proper dinner. I am going to make this brief because I don’t really have anything good to say about the food. The first problem is the menu…. It is WAY too long!!! Cortese has over 150 menu items… Not only is it difficult to choose what to order but I am sure it is difficult for management to keep all those ingredients fresh… I ordered the veal saltimbocca which is made with butter garlic, prosciutto, and mozzarella in a sherry cream sauce. I have had this dish at other Italian restaurants and always enjoyed it. Here, not so much… It came with a choice of side and a salad. The salad was made from typical ice-crutch lettuce and canned olives. I chose a baked potato as my side, which was fine. Although, It’s pretty hard to screw up a baked potato. The veal was served on its own plate quarantined from any other food on the table, it seemed to be drowning in a shallow puddle of sauce that the waitress (or kitchen) managed to spill over the edges of the dish on 3 sides. The veal was somewhat edible but there was an excess of sherry in the sauce and a lack of cream. It was incredibly sweet and not savory or rich at all. The presentation of the food was astonishingly bad and the waitress was overly enthusiastic. For $20 I was expecting more… Cortese is a nice place to sit and have a drink at the bar, watch sports and have a witty conversation with the bartender. But as for the food, I think I’ll stick to the pizza. 2 out of 5 stars…