It's an end of an era!

It has been four hours since I have came back from dinner at the original Vivoli Cafe on Sunset Blvd in Los Angeles; I have already experienced 2 of the 5 stages of grief, skipped the third stage and went right to stage number four: depression. As you can tell, the experience was less than satisfactory, in fact, it was extremely disappointing.

The meal started pretty well, our server seem to have recognized us from all the previous visits that we made, which was pretty impressive cause we live 400 miles away, but it also shows how often we come to this restaurant. However, everything seems to have gone downhill when the food hit the table. The bread was warm, but tasted different. The calamari was good, but the portion was cut in half. The gnocchi tasted exactly like the ones in the Thousand Oaks, CA branch, which is not good and you can read about it on my previous post. The lobster ravioli resembles 90% of the one that I had in the past, but the sauce tasted less refine than before.

So here were my thoughts during each of the stages:

Stage 1: Denial
OMG! I can't believe this is happening! Maybe it's just this one time, maybe if I come tomorrow at lunch everything will be fine again. Or better yet, maybe this is just a dream. Yeah, that's it, hey you! Wake up! If I just wake up, everything will be back to normal....

Stage 2: Anger
What is going on? I demand some answers!!! Did you guys change management? Change owner? What is the deal here!!!! The food is clearly not the same as before, do you think people won't notice?!?! Give me my GNOCCHI!!!!

Stage 3: Bargaining
(skipped)

Stage 4: Depression
Dinner sucks, this night sucks, it's an end of an era!!!! (sigh) I just want to climb into bed and do nothing.

After watching half an hour of The Office, I seem to feel a little better but I still can't seem to move onto the acceptance stage.

I really don't know what happened to my beloved restaurant. My best guess is change of owner/management or chef. I don't even recognize most of the servers there and the service has gone down. It almost feel like one of those cases when a new management team took over a successful restaurant and decided that they can cut cost by using inferior ingredients and give out smaller portion while charging the same price. What they don't realize is that although they might be able to save some money in the short run, they will start to lose their customer base, and world of mouth will eventually kill their business.

I don't know if I will return after tonight, maybe I'll give them another chance, but based on tonight's dining experience, I can no longer say that I will recommend anyone to Vivoli Cafe until I know for sure that tonight is just a fluke. I'm crossing my fingers that tonight was just a bad night for them, and unfortunately for me as well, and hoping that the next time I come back, I will be welcomed by the same fluffy gnocchi that I so fondly remembered.