I want to preface this by saying that I in no way had a bad night. In fact, much of it was very nice and I genuinely enjoyed myself. This post unfortunately doesn’t mention much of that.
Since I have the honor to be part of Nathan and Emie’s wedding party, I was invited to their bachelor (and bachelorette) party. They combined the two parties into a dinner at Bella Notte and an excursion to the Shout House. It was the first time that I had been to either place.
The food at Bella Notte was good, but I didn’t feel that it was any better than the Olive Garden. I ended up having spaghetti, meatballs, and spicy sausage due to just about everything else on the menu having either cheese or seafood in it. I wasn’t very impressed and probably would not recommend it as highly as say, Trattoria da Vinci.
The Shout House was pretty cool. For those that haven’t heard of it, it is basically a dueling piano bar. There were four musicians that night. They had sets lasting about an hour each. At the beginning of each set, the two guys that had been on break jumped on to a drum set and bass guitar for a song or two before they took their places on the pianos. I was impressed that all four of them could go from piano to drums, to bass guitar with ease. They were also able to play just about any song that had been on the billboard charts in the last few decades, including Sir Mix-a-lot’s “I Like Big Butts” rap anthem.
That ends the praise for the Shout House. Here begins a couple of issues that we had with them. First of all, there was quite a lot of swearing and sexual innuendo. When one guy wasn’t singing along to “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucile”; he was verbally lambasted and had to stand up all alone to yell a comeback to that line that goes like this: “You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucile”, “You expletive, You expletive, You expletive”.
That kind of language didn’t happen too often until right up about 11PM. That’s when it seemed that the floodgates opened. Nathan and Emie and some guy who had a birthday were coerced onto the stage. The piano started to play “the Hokey Pokey”, while the singer attempted to get the three to stick various parts of their respective anatomies out. Nathan and Emie looked disgusted.
Needless to say, Justin and I decided that we would call it a night and took off. I am not sure when everyone else left.
Hi, Jonn: I was sorry the night turned out the way it did. I was at the Shout one time last April and did not recall all the vulgarity. As you could probably gather, I was 100% mortified for the “hokey pokey.” After going to the bathroom to cool down, we left (Nathan, my sister, cousin, and my sister’s friend) left as well. I’m a little surprised you like the Olive Garden better. Bella Notte is much more authentic in its Italian food (more Northern Italy than Southern). Everyone has different tastes, though. Regardless of the ending, I am glad you came. I promise the wedding will be 100% more tasteful and worth your while. 🙂
I didn’t mean that the Olive Garden was better, but I guess that I didn’t feel Bella Notte was as good as I had expected. That’s the bad thing about hype… I was disappointed that there wasn’t as much of a choice for poor souls like myself that can’t have cheese or seafood.
I really want to stress that I would have gone again if I had the chance to redo it. The good of the night far outweighed the bad! I was there for you guys!