In our continuing quest for a good dinner in/near downtown Monterey, we more-or-less randomly chose Cibo, at the north end of the downtown drag, for dinner on Saturday evening. We were seated promptly in the mostly-empty restaurant (it was early — 5:30), which had awful muzac-style “jazz” playing.

The decor is fairly nice in a generic hotel sort of way, and, oddly, our tabletop was padded, which made glasses stand a little crooked. I started with a Manhattan ($7 PLUS $2 for having it served up – WTF?!?) and Sarah had a glass of the house chard ($7.50, and not very good).

From the antipasto section of the menu, I mistakenly ordered the Fritto Misto ($13) rather than the Antipasto Misto which we wanted. Oh well – the Fritto Misto (literally “fried mixed”) was good, with lots of very tender calamari, some shrimp, and a few (very few) scallops. A basket with warm bread was accompanied by oil and balsamic vinegar, which was nice until we noticed that later diners got a variety of breads, sticks, and crackers, while we received only one.

Strangely, our waiter didn’t take our main order until we’d already finished the antipasta, and told me it would take longer for the baked dish I ordered, trying to coax us into getting a salad between the courses. Now I know this is a pretty traditional Italian way to serve meals (ordering each course as you finish the previous), but it would have been nice to be told this, as it is definitely not common here in the US.

For my main I had the Anelletti al Forno ($16) and Sarah had the Buaccatini Carbonara ($16). There were other good-looking dishes on the non-pasta section of the menu, but all were fairly pricey ($19-33, averaging about $25).

Both of our dishes were tasty, especially mine, which was an interesting “loaf” of O-shaped pasta (the anelletti) with bechamel sauce, tomato sausage sauce, and a topping of thinly-sliced eggplant. Sarah’s carbonara was a fine rendition of this classic dish. With dinner I had a glass of the house pinot noir – at $8.50 it was kinda pricey, but actually rather good.

Service was a low point, however – our waiter walked past us many, many times without checking if we needed anything (like, say, another drink), and was fairly surly/sneery throughout. The water/bussing service was much better than the food service, I must say!

Although the food was pretty tasty overall (and we enjoyed the leftovers as a picnic the next day), the weird decor, poor service, and fairly high prices are not likely to find us returning terribly soon. Our total was $92 after tax, before tip for 4 glasses of wine, a cocktail, antipasto, and two pastas.

My rating: Good

Cibo (website)
301 Alvarado St.
Monterey, CA (map)
(831)649-8151