Not so positive on Positano

We took a break from the Attractions Guide this week and made a return visit to Positano, an Italian restaurant at 2605 Lawndale Drive in Greensboro. To answer the first question, yes, there was a coupon involved, but it came from the Grapevine advertising mailer.

My wife and I had been to Positano last fall and thought that the food and service were pretty good. The restaurant compared favorably to some other moderately-priced Italian restaurants in Greensboro. It seemed worth a return visit, so a few months later, I brought some business colleagues over. That visit was more marginal (and cost me my restaurant picking privileges at work for a month). With one good experience, one so-so experience, and of course, the all-important coupon, we decided to give Positano one more try.

We were seated right away but were immediately interrogated about our drink preferences (having an opportunity to crack open a menu, look at the wine list, or consult our lawyers would have been nice). Finding ourselves unexpectedly placed in the drink order lightning round, the kids and I shot back orders for waters and iced teas. However, the pressure was too much for my wife. As the waiter's gaze spun to her, she cracked, stammered, then went with the last response she had heard--a glass of water. As we took a breath and opened our menus, the waiter to snatched the untouched wine list from the end of the table.

We were ready with our appetizer choice when the waiter returned and also sought permission to look at the wine list. A few minutes later, when ordering the meals, we asked for a bottle of prosecco. The waiter trotted off, but was back a minute later to tell us that the last bottle had been sold the weekend before.

The appetizer was fried calamari with a tomato sauce on the side. I write "tomato sauce" because there were two giant chunks of tomato in a tiny bowl with a little bit of accompanying sauce. The tomato proved quite effective in blocking our otherwise reasonable attempts to apply sauce to the fried squid.

The entrees can be best described as the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good: My wife got the smoked mozzarella and chicken ravioli, and son #1 got the chicken parmigiana. Both of these were very good.

The bad: Son #2 got the linguini and clams, usually a safe bet. Positano gets good marks for using real clams, real lemon juice, and real garlic, but loses points for not cleaning the clams properly, not straining the lemons, and not tracking its garlic usage. A better description of the dish would have been linguini and clams and grit and seeds and garlic and garlic and garlic.

The ugly: I ordered the rotisserie chicken and received a somewhat unusual cut that included a huge portion of neck.

Eventually, activity slowed then stopped with our plates, and this neatly coincided activity slowing then stopping with our server. When the waiter finally did return, we passed on dessert. He was gracious about the coupon.

One must always look on the bright side about these things. In this case, the big plus is that the visit to Positano has cured son #2 of a nasty teeth-grinding habit.