The food was great; the timing was not.

That's as simple a description as one can say about Mario & Luigi's Italian Restaurant, 1272 N. Atherton St.

While a tad on the generic side, Mario & Luigi's is a great family restaurant with something for everyone, including many vegetarian-friendly meals. The selection itself, to say the least, is daunting. Dozens upon dozens of items were there for the choosing, and while I normally pick what I want to eat within a 60-second glance of a menu, I actually had to take my time and read through the sometimes-in-English, sometimes-in-Italian dish names.

For an appetizer, I tried the deep-fried calamari, a favorite starter of mine. While delicious for any seafood fans, the serving size was less than desirable: barely enough for two to split portion-wise, but certainly enough to split cost-wise.

Because the restaurant was celebrating a mushroom festival, my party tried a special shroom-themed starter. I will be the first to admit that I typically don't go for the edible fungi, but the platter, which included mushrooms encased in an omelet-like fare, was pleasurable even to my picky tastebuds.

Literally only minutes after our appetizers our meals arrived, creating a crowded table and a slight irritation among my dinner crew. To make matters worse, we realized that none of us had received our salads before the meal. When asked, the server apologized profusely and admitted to forgetting to bring them out first. We just asked her to bring them out at the end of the meal.

After the dust settled, we dug in. Complaints died immediately as the food touched our lips. My chicken tetrazzini over fettuccine was marvelous to say the least. Plopped in a fantastic Italian cream sauce, the pasta was soft and the chicken succulent. Bits of tomato and mushroom were strewn about, adding a bit of flavorful variety. Part of me wanted to complain that there wasn't enough of it, but my logical half realized I wouldn't have stopped eating if there had been.

And I must admit that while I have spent much of my life with a strong distaste for spinach and spinach-like dishes, I truly enjoyed the spinach ricotta gnocchi in mascarpone sauce. While the flavor of the dreadful green stuff was present, it was tastefully wrapped up in a soft pasta shell and drenched in its white, creamy sauce.

As part of the fall season, Mario & Luigi's is offering a pumpkin ravioli. While the taste of pumpkin has been something that has grown on me over the years, I still found the ravioli to be a bit too sweet for its purpose. It was like accidentally drinking one flavor of soda when you think you're taking a sip from another.

The meal was coming to a close -- that is, until our salads finally came. The salads were like any other, nothing to write home about, but perfectly acceptable.

The bill arrived, the prices being what one would expect from a pseudo-exquisite Italian dining establishment: a little higher than they ought to be. Despite a couple minor irritations and borderline prices, Mario & Luigi's was a truly tasty experience, in a very Americanized Italian way.