Last night, a couple of friends had their siblings in town and I joined them for dinner. After trying to make same day reservations at all the usual Kingston suspects, we ended up at Aroma, which was like seventh on the list of places we wanted to go. The best thing about this place is that it's friggin huge, and will almost always be able to accommodate you, as it rarely fills up. Nevertheless, the food, service and decor are definitely not great. The place looks like it is straight out of an Ikea catalogue, and the waitress was a bit of a space cadet.
I ordered a fried calamari with aeoli appetizer, a taglietelle putanesca entree and two martinis. Although the waitress was definitely peachy (most Kingstononians in the service industry are), she didn't really have a great grasp on things. When I ordered my drink, she asked me if I wanted it on the rocks. Now, I'm not a picky guy, and I'm constantly trying to help waiters because I used to be one, but I kind of think it's weird that the waitress asked me this - to my knowledge, martinis are never served with ice. Anyway, drinks took an inordinate amount of time to come. In fact, appetizers arrive before the drinks. The olives in my martini were pretty disgusting - hard and tasteless. The martini, on the other hand, was great. Why are those things so easy to pound? It's just liquor, but it goes down so smooth. Maybe it's the temperature? I don't know. I digress.
The calamari was okay to fair, but the sauce accompanying it was bland and tasteless. The pasta was actually pretty good. The portion size was huge and I wasn't able to finish it. I love olives and capers and anchovies and anything salty, and there was plenty of that in the pasta.
Anyway, the total came to $40.50, which is pretty good considering the drinks I ordered. Will I come back here? Probably, but only because it's hard to get a table in Kingston on a Saturday when you are with a group.
Rating: 7/10
Aroma Resto Winebar is located at 248 Ontario St. in Kingston, Ontario.
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