Considering the restaurant's pricey nature and my love of Italian food, I thought Gino's would be a great place for my birthday dinner. I was wrong.\n\nI went with my wife and two of our friends. As you'd expect at a place that charges $15 a plate, we were seated, the waitress (who I doubt was older than 19) took our beverage orders, then came back after a bit to take our entree orders. We all ordered the lasagna (which the menu claims is the best in Madison), except for my one friend who ordered some kind of ravioli.\n\nThen he tried to question the waitress on their wine selection. She rattled off their prices so fast he hadn't even finished asking yet, but when he wanted details (what wines do they have? what would go well with his order? do dry wines go well with tomato sauces?) her expression was absolutely vacant, and she quickly agreed to anything he suggested (um, uh, yes, of course whatever you just said will go great with your order!), obviously in a hurry to get his order and get gone.\n\nShe brought us our drinks, then brought out a bowl of small but tasty pieces of garlic bread, then our salads (included with the entrees), and finally the appetizer I'd ordered, mozzarella sticks. The salad was decent -- essentially just lettuce, but a few shreds of cabbage and other greens kept it from being as dull as the usual side salad most places will give you -- and the garlic bread and mozzarella sticks were very good. She did get one of our salad dressings wrong, but that was quickly remedied. \n\nFinally, our meals came. The portions of lasagna were a little smaller than I'd expected for the price, but since we'd already filled up on appetizers, I didn't mind too much. Besides, that turned out to be the least of my complaints about Gino's lasagna.\n\nLet's start off with the presentation. Now, I'm not picky: I certainly wasn't expecting it to come with a little bow or anything, but they served it sitting in a lake of red sauce that completely covered the plate. I speared every bite oh-so-carefully on my fork, afraid if a bit of food broke off and landed on my plate it would splatter all over my shirt. Considering how hard tomato stains are to get out, I wasn't too happy about that possibility.\n\nThen there was the flavor. Really good lasagna is a delicate balance of meat, tomato, ricotta and even noodle. Gino's lasagna, on the other hand, was slathered in so much tomato sauce that it drowned out any other flavor -- except the salt, which had been applied in such copious amounts that it battled the tomato for supremacy. Frankly, the overall quality of the sauce reminded me of something you'd get out of a Chef Boyardee can.\n\nI will note that, while the three of us who ordered the lasagna were less than impressed, our other friend enjoyed his ravioli and wine.
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