Okay so we went again tonight. The waiter who took our order said that the dishes do come with a side--pasta or vegetable. I ordered a special, chicken marsala, and he said it would come with spinach. Then another waiter came by and said that we had been misinformed about the side dish coming with the main dish, but he would give me the spinach anyway!
Hmm....don't know why they can't get their story straight. He did give me the spinach, and the food was good (we had linguine with clams as well) and overall we had a nice time--and the place was quite crowded with a wide variety of people, all ethnicities, by the way--reflective of the neighborhood and not just a certain segment of the population.
So they seem to be doing well regardless of the confusion or the a la carte menu. They just seem to be kind of disorganized still. We saw waiters giving other diners the little wedge of parmesan they give as an appetizer, but they never brought it to our table. However, they did bring the zucchini appetizer (free) that we got one of the two prior times we dined there. My daughter asked for a candle in the dessert we ordered (it was my birthday) and several waiters came and sang Happy Birthday. It was nice, the service was quite friendly--though I will say that getting served was a bit on the slow side. All in all--I'll go back, though the thing about no sides with the main dish does annoy me.