Girasole - Darby Township

We had July 4 dinner here with the family (4 people total). The homemade pasta was delicious! However, the chocolate mouse (mouse al cioccolato) tasted like butter frosting my mother made when I was a kid for my birthday cake. I helped her to make it that is why I know she used butter, cocoa powder, confectionery sugar, and 2% milk for her infamous butter frosting . With a classy Italian restaurant such as this one, why was the homemade desert made like butter frosting? You could see the little coagulated clumps of confectionery sugar in the chocolate mouse. That cost $9 and was not worth the money. On a good note the torta di mele (apple tort) was scrumptious and made from scratch!

Vegetarian? Eat at your own risk. The evening started out excellent with a friendly waitress pointing out 3 vegetarian options (the menu may only have had a handful counting 2 salads and cheese appetizers). We got the gnocchi and rigatoni with an arugula salad. Halfway into eating the rigatoni I was curious what the chewy chunks were turned out to be something like prosciutto. We got a sorry that's it. No offer to replace the dish, a dessert, or a discount on the bill. Left a tip on 2 of the 3 dishes and left dissatisfied. We were the only ones in the restaurant so some consideration for the surprised vegetarians chomping on chewy meat would have been very appreciated. Change your menu to either include sneaky meat in your sauce or put a (V) next to your gracious few vegetarian items. Training your staff to know which items are vegetarian would be nice but probably more difficult than a menu revision. Thanks.

Food was good. I took my fiance there for the Take a man on a date month , and he was impressed. The dining experience was...not what I expected. Since it was Restaurant week as well, I feel like service was poor. There were only 6 at a table to the side of us, and a couple at the bar, but we were barely greeted, and our server asked us if we were ready to order about 7 minutes after we sat down. She and another server just cleaned the other vacant tables, and did not acknowledge us until they were finished, no I 'll be right with you. I made reservation online, and I put in the comments that I wanted to redeem my Groupon. I get my bill, they then decide it could not be used, but she said she would talk to her manager. The manager agreed, but soon after, she still billed me for full price. Figuring out she made a mistake, she voided the amount and charged my card again. Even with the lack of service and the error, I still gave a 23% percent tip, and I feel like I should have made an exception but I didn 't feel like it was deserved.

I had the opportunity, no, pleasure of dinning at Girasole, on Friday of last week, and let me tell you me and my fiancee thoroughly enjoyed our experience. Franco, owner, and Angela his wife, and chef were more than gracious hosts. The food was superb, I had the bronzino baked in sea salt, and my fiancee had the veal special for the night and both were prepared to perfection. We started with appetizers, the carpacio girasole, and the melanzzane, and then split a pasta in the middle as well. We each had cappucino, and shared a piece of the homemade riccotta cheesecake, exquisite. We could not stop talking about how great everything was, from the manger/hostess Michelle, Franco and Angela's daughter, to our service from waitress Carolina, everything was above our expectations. We left bellies full and hearts as well as we fell in love with this gem of a restaurant on Pine St. Needless to say we will be returning and often. You gotta try this place it really was beyond compare.

Nice place but nothing to get excited about. Service was ok. Food was good, nice portion and quality. Could be better could be worse.