Ristorante Murali, Corporate Italian on S. Joyce Street in Pentagon Row - Closed

[TomA]

As usually satisfied regulars to Bebo, I would like to put the pro and con Bebo arguments in perspective by summarizing an experience my wife and I had last night at Murali in Pentagon Row. We ended up there after running a few errands in the mall and expecting to catch the always decent happy hour at Lebanese Taverna. Much to our chagrin, it was closed for a private party. looking for the least bad option in that wasteland, we chose Murali, which we hadn't been to in years. For $92, we got 6 glasses of wine, a crab/avocado salad with brownish avocado and slighly "old" crabmeat and split a $26.50 plate of seafood risotto which was a mixed bag to say the least...the seafood was actually fine in it, but the rice was overccoked, the sauce bland and strangely out of place huge chunks of cold tomato were all over the place! The moral..for less than this "stuff" costs, at Bebo you can get outstanding risotto for $19 bucks, good salads, good ingredients in all dishes and at least decent, sometimes outstanding preparation of most dishes plus of the 20+ pizzas I have had, all have been at least good. most very good to execellent. And service..once you become a regular at the bar, you are treated as such...Chef Donna always says hello to us and the the sous chef Amy came out are last time there to see if we enjoyed the whole wheat spaghetti special..Bebo is not perfect, but we all need perspective after blundering into some the price point competition. Our expectations for a Donna restaurant are indeed high, but essentially at this point, Bebo is the best place of its type in NOVA, albeit with slim to no competition...BTW please people somebody try Cucina Vivace up the street..on our way home last night at 8:00 PM..nobody was in there!

[DonRocks]

Restaurant Murali has closed. We really nailed the reviews on this one, huh?  Anyway, here's one of my own from 2011.