Faux Philip at ESCA

I live near Esca, a high-end restaurant specializing in southern Italian seafood. For years I've passed by, figuring I'd go in there one day when the occasion arose. Well, finally it did: my dad's birthday.

The food was pretty nice, but the service was surprisingly bad. The menus took forever to arrive, as did the drinks. And we were feeling a little rushed since we were on our way to the theater. My dad asked the bus boy for the waiter's name, but he didn't know; apparently this was the waiter's first day. Uh-oh.

At least this gave us plenty of time to catch up. Just as my mother was recounting the plot of the latest movie she'd seen, directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman, another waiter walked into my field of vision who looked A LOT like Mr. Hoffman himself.

Was the actor preparing for a role as a waiter? Could it really be him? Judge for yourself:

You can only tell the two apart because one of them is busy peeling back fish skin.  I was quite disappointed when faux Philip took FOREVER to fillet my mom's pink snapper, because when everyone else's dishes arrived, they were all cold. They had been sitting there on the fillet table the whole time. Shouldn't a place of this caliber have a better system? We had to send the other dishes back to be reheated. And after all that, there were still plenty of bones in the snapper. Had faux Philip ever even filleted a fish before? Odd, since Hoffman's new movie is called Jack Goes Boating.

I'm not sure I'd go back to Esca, despite the fact that the food, once it arrived, wasn't bad. Because, despite the celebrity sighting, we certainly did not get celebrity service.