When walking downtown, you don’t really notice certain restaurants. Usually I’m not willing to spend more than $10 on a meal, simply because I’m practically a starving student, even though my parents pay for majority of my things.

A friend and I went to Genovese, or as their sign said, “Geno”, because some of the lights had gone out, and I guess it wasn’t their top priority to fix it.

We were seated immediately, which is one of the only good things I have to say. We sat at this very uncomfortable round table in the middle of the top floor. Our table felt very crowded with drink menus and a wooden piece held a single candle that was never lit.

Ten to fifteen minutes after being seated, we got glasses of water and were told that our waitress would be with us shortly. That was a lie. Fifteen minutes later, our waitress decided to come take our order. We had already looked over the menu three times, and knew what we wanted. We decided against any drink other than water.

We split a small order of the spinach fettuccine, which cost an extra $2. $2 to use separate bowls. $2 to eat separate extraordinarily small meals.  Everyone around us had bread, and I was really questioning if they weren’t giving us any because we weren’t dressed appropriately.

Around fifteen minutes after ordering, we got our food. To my surprise, it didn’t take long to get our meal. Honestly, it was one of the best meals I’ve had in quite a while, considering I live in a house that doesn’t eat wheat due to a parent with a severe allergy to gluten. So, eating anything with wheat in it is amazing to me. I’m not going to lie, I ate the small amount of green noodles with pieces of spinach and peas within two minutes. We also finally got our bread when the actual meal came out. Even though we had noodles and bread, I was still hungry after the meal, and I actually considered ordering a dessert but decided that the money could be spent buying a lot more ice cream from somewhere else.

The two dips for the bread, oil and balsamic vinaigrette and hummus, weren’t all that great, but dipping the bread in the pasta sauce was far better.

After we finished eating, we were prepared to get out of there because the Friday night restaurant rush was so loud that I felt like I was screaming across the two foot long table. It was so loud in the room that I could barely collect my thoughts, and even considered texting my friend just to have a conversation.

For the two of us the total was $15 for a meal that could barely fill one person. All in all, the food is so expensive that you would think that they could change the lightbulbs outside their building.

I can’t completely trash Genovese though. I did enjoy the food. You could, however, get better service at IHOP, and that’s saying something. I would recommend Genovese to wealthy families who have rich friends and want something to do on a Friday night, but not for high school or college students.