02/03/2005: "Restaurant Review - Mezzaluna"
Today Angela and I went to Mezzaluna for dinner. While we have eaten there once before, neither one of us has much memory of that experience. We arrived at around 5:15 p.m. to an empty restaurant. Walking in, the host, who I can only guess is restaurant proprietor Florin Mihailescu, said something unintelligible to us. Either he was speaking with a very thick accent or it was another language entirely. Barely looking at us, he offered that we sit at any table in the restaurant. We chose a booth near a window.
On the way to our table, I noticed a sewer-like smell. I asked Angie if she could smell it, and she said no. I decided give it a few minutes and look at the menu, hoping the smell would go away. Unfortunately, the smell actually started to make me sick to my stomach....hardly what one wants when dining. I could only handle about 3 minutes of this before I decided that we had to leave. As we were standing up, the host (who was now acting as waiter) came into the room from the kitchen bearing a basket of bread. Seeing us standing up, he stopped in his tracks and stared at us. I apologized to him and informed him that we would be unable to eat at his restaurant because of the sewer smell. I asked if there had been a sewer leak or something, to which he replied (not even looking at us, and in fact walking away from us in apparent annoyance), "No....there is no leak here."
I don't know what that smell was....the restaurant is full of flowers, so maybe it is some flower which I find distasteful. Perhaps it was something from the Chinese restaurant next-door. Maybe it really was a sewer problem that the proprietor didn't want to admit to. I do know that the smell wasn't present the first time we visited the restaurant a couple years ago, as I would have remembered something so disgusting (and we wouldn't have eaten there).
Both Angela and I found the host/waiter's attitude inappropriately un-servicelike. I hope this is not his general personality and that he was just having a bad day.
Restaurant Rating: 2 stars out of 10 - (hard to eat in a sewer)
Restaurant Address: 7807 Quivira Rd, Shawnee Mission, KS 66216
Restaurant Phone: (913) 248-0087