Lo Porto is billed as one of the top restaurants in Troy. It is a favorite of film director Martin Scorsese, who used to frequent the area, and they have even name a dish after him—veal Scorsese. The menu, mostly Italian dishes, is fairly varied—it includes frog legs—and the wine list is even longer.

The restaurant is nestled in the middle of a fairly generic city block downtown, and it’s certainly not much to look at from the outside. But inside, it’s quite nice. There is a bar for patrons who are waiting to be seated, the lighting is soothingly dimmed, and each table has candles on it.

My dining companion and I had previously been to Lo Porto, for her graduation dinner. The food, atmosphere, and service were all excellent, and we were looking forward to another outstanding meal.

Unfortunately, the experience fell well short of our expectations.

We were seated quickly enough, but the ceiling fans in the room were directly below the lights, causing an extremely obnoxious strobe effect that rapidly gave both of us a headache; another group changed tables for precisely this reason. Our waitress shut the fan off as soon as we asked; the catch was actually flagging her down, which proved to be a serious problem the whole night.

A while after we had drained our water glasses, our server came to take our orders. I went for chicken Milanese, a dish described in the menu as involving lots of olives and capers, which I like quite a bit. My companion opted for trout mugnaia, featuring a black pepper-based cream sauce. We put in our salad orders and were told that the bread was in the oven and would be out right away.

It wasn’t right away by any stretch, but this was more than made up for by the fact that the bread at Lo Porto is quite good. We downed that fairly quickly, and shortly thereafter went through our water again. We waited for our waitress to come by to refill it. Other servers came in and out of the room several times. We continued to wait. Eventually, our salads came, and our waitress noticed the water glasses and refilled them.

The wait for dinner was also quite long, and while we waited, a vent directly underneath the cable came on, blowing very cold air at us. This really didn’t do much to improve our mood.

Finally, the main courses were brought in. My companion’s dish was truly excellent; the cream sauce was very light, and the fish was cooked to perfection. My meal, on the other hand, was basically heavily battered and fried chicken with a bunch of bell peppers, which I loathe, and a minimum of the capers and olives I was expecting. The chicken was very greasy and really wasn’t any better than stuff I’ve had in the Rathskellar. Fortunately, the portions are fairly large—my companion didn’t finish her meal, and I was able to put mine aside and polish hers off instead.

Then it was time to wait with empty water glasses again. We watched the other servers bustle in and out as we froze from the cold air still pouring out of the vent. We thought about asking for the check when our waitress came back, but our sweet tooths prevailed and we decided to split a dessert. This turned out to be a good move; the chocolate pie was quite good, if not the best I’ve ever had. (Note: The tiramisu at Lo Porto is in fact the best I’ve ever had. If you go, try it.)

Dessert disappeared in short order, after which we, predictably, waited for a while before we could ask for the check.