Mia Dona.(Restaurant review)

Mia Dona's failures are minor, but the accretion of them can feel major. The staff seems perpetually harried; one night, the hostess couldn't find a waiting party and exclaimed, when the impatient group approached to check on the status of its table, "You aren't who I thought you were!" On another evening, at 7:30, the kitchen was out of the pappardelle and the lamb, two of the more acclaimed items on the menu. Even as the surrounding tables were vacated and left empty, the remaining diners were hustled along: as one was slowly nibbling at the last bites of the addictively creamy gnudi, her plate was snatched from underneath her fork. And at 9 P.M. the waiter was explaining, "Because of the late hour, we are out of the panna cotta and the Sicilian ice-cream sandwich." Was this Manhattan or Boca Raton?

The restaurant, which opened in February, is the third collaboration between Donatella Arpaia and Michael Psilakis, after Dona (which closed last year) and Anthos. Meant to evoke "a home where Donatella would gather friends and family for a long Sunday afternoon supper," the narrow space is divided into three rooms: the "lounge" (white-washed brick, black accents), the "living room" (floral wallpaper), and the "library" (blond wood, ...