Via Emilia redux

When DL suggested going to Via Emilia I was happy to say yes. I'd enjoyed the meal I'd had there last time, and since the place is tasty, inexpensive, and close to her office, meeting up there for lunch was an easy decision.

As before, they started us off with a basket of sliced focaccia and a dish of fruity olive oil for dipping.

As a starter we went for one of the day's specials, mozzarella in carroza. I have a feeling this is one of those recipes that has a lot of variations, but the basic concept seems to involve slipping mozzarella cheese between two slices of bread, and then dipping the whole thing in batter and pan-frying it until the bread crisps and the cheese gets gooey. Like the love child of french toast and grilled cheese, maybe. Via Emila's version added thin slices of proscuitto to the mix, as well as a weird green puree on the side that tasted vaguely of spinach. I don't know what that puree was supposed to accomplish, but it neither added or detracted from the dish.

During my last meal at Via Emilia I'd eyed my friend's tagliatelle al ragu with envy, and I seized the opportunity to order it for myself this time. I have a feeling I've found my go-to dish at this restaurant—the tender ribbons of fresh pasta were coated in a rich, beefy sauce that made each bite pure pleasure. DL ordered the farfalle al salmon I had liked, but after the tagliatelle al ragu I wasn't even interested in taking a bite.

I think I crave that fresh pasta even now…I might have to start looking into how to make my own.

With friends, a meal of mac 'n' cheese

My reasons for wanting to invite friends over for dinner were several: 1) I needed to start emptying my refrigerator in preparation for going home to NYC for a month; 2) It was about time I started having people over at my apartment; 3) I wanted an excuse to make a huge pan of mac 'n' cheese.

So dinner, with mac 'n' cheese, it was.


I knew the main course was going to be heavy, so I just came up with a few simple sides to go with it: green salad with tomatoes, olive bread, and slices of roasted kabocha squash. I roasted the seeds from inside the squash too, for snacking.

I'd made this particular recipe for mac 'n' cheese once before, for a friend's Thanksgiving potluck, and had been wanting a reason to make it again ever since. The nice thing about this recipe is that it doesn't require the pasta to be boiled first; you simply stir the uncooked elbows into a slurry of milk, cottage cheese, and grated sharp cheddar and then throw the whole thing into the oven, covered with tin foil, for half an hour. After that, you uncover the pan, sprinkle on more cheese, and bake until the top gets crusty and browned.

The mac 'n' cheese was a hit the first time I made it, and this time was no different; four of us went through nearly three quarters of the pan that night. (I had increased the original recipe by half, too!) After finishing up the meal with slices of key lime pie, I sent everyone home with blackberry muffins and leftover mac 'n' cheese: had all that food been left with me, I probably would have exploded trying to finish it all.

Half and half at Canino's

At Canino's, the awesomeness of the second-floor outdoor back patio, which provided a decent glimpse of sunset, was knocked down by its unadorned decor and unlovely view of the parking lot; the awesomeness of the cheese tortellini's five dollar price tag (a recession special, I believe) was knocked down by the fact that it tasted like a TV dinner from the frozen aisle. As for the sauces, offered "half and half" on my pasta so that I could try both, the Alfredo was too thick and too salty, too rich a pairing for the pasta by far, and the marinara no better than jarred. I guess in this case, instead of half and half, I would have preferred things to just be all-around good. Ah well, at least the company was excellent…

Olive Garden, over a decade later

The last time I remember going to an Olive Garden was in high school. Back then the place was the sh*t, particularly because of their unlimited salad and breadsticks. When school let out we'd head over to the Times Square location, excited about going for a meal in a real restaurant. Free, unlimited salad and breadsticks paired with a bottomless pasta promotion: Olive Garden offered the finest bang for the buck my friends and I could imagine.

Over ten years later, in the Fort Collins location of the chain, nothing about Olive Garden has changed much. The salad and breadsticks are still free and unlimited, and they taste just as I remember—a tasty vinaigrette over bagged greens and croutons, and hot, squishy, salty buttered bread reminiscent of soft hot dog buns.

SD and I opted to split a full order of the Seafood Portofino, an assortment of shellfish and seafood with mushrooms in a garlic-butter wine sauce over linguine, so what you see in the bowl above, and in the top picture, is only half of the full entree. (I appreciated that they gave us each portion in a nicely presented separate bowl.) While it tasted pretty good, the pasta was so rich we found that sharing one entree was a great idea—the amount we received was huge. NH, who went for a full entree of Chicken Alfredo, ended up full only midway through his plate.

Being sensible creatures, we split our dessert, too. The Chocolate Ciottoli Cake ("dark chocolate cobblestone cake chunks layered with chocolate mousse and a soft brownie topped with hazelnuts") was too heavy and too sweet, and tasted like the frozen and thawed cake it was. But I hadn't expected any different, and maybe that's the key to eating in restaurants like these—embrace these chains for their consistency, average level of tastiness, and huge portions; don't wish you were at Otto or Max. You'll end up okay.

Great Plates: Great deals?

Great Plates Downtown is an annual event in Fort Collins, along the lines of Restaurant Week in other cities. For a two-week duration participating restaurants offer a dinner special for $18.68, which is quite cheap compared to the three-course lunch for $24.07 and the three-course dinner for $35 offered only during weekdays for typical Restaurant Week promotions in New York City. Plus, depending on the restaurant, $18.68 can be the total cost of two entrees, a three-course meal for one, a three-course meal for two, or a full family dinner. Quite a bargain!

But in the end, is Great Plates really a "deal"? I'm not so sure. I went with three friends to The Rustic Oven, where they were offering two entrees for $18.68. We were given a list of about nine or ten options, but in the interest of getting the best bang for the buck three of us opted to go with the "Baked Tenderloin Diavolo" that you see above, which normally costs $17.95. I would have been mighty grumpy had I paid full price for this one. The pasta was bland and overcooked, the gorgonzola and chipotle sauce tasted muddled, and the tenderloin—which I had expected in big pieces from the menu description—arrived instead as itty bitty chunklets scattered ungenerously throughout the pasta. It was every bit worth paying nine bucks for, but not much more.

Similarly, I would have been grumpy paying full price for this prime rib from Austin's American Grill, which is normally $18-$20. Here the Great Plates promotion was also two entrees for $18.68 so my steak was only nine bucks. Unfortunately, while it was a hefty slab of meat, its flavor was tiresome and bland, and I would up taking most of it home in order to transform it into something else. In terms of quantity this was surely a deal, but in terms of quality, I found the deal wanting. I liked the meal I'd had at Austin's several months ago much better.

Finally, at Taj Mahal, where again the promotion was two entrees for $18.68, we were given a choice of entrees whose prices barely hovered above nine bucks to begin with. The food was good, but the price we paid was only a dollar or so cheaper than what we would have paid without the promotion.

For all three restaurants the choice of entrees came from their regular menu. So what's the problem here? Are restaurants not putting out their best efforts with this promotion, or is the food just not great? Maybe they were just so slammed during the promotion that less care was taken with each dish. Or maybe it's simply a matter of taste, and of picking the right entree.

I'll continue to check out Great Plates as it comes up, but I'm a bit less excited about it than I was at first. Perhaps I just have to figure out which restaurants offer the best experience, like I started to do with Restaurant Week in NYC.

Romano's Macaroni Grill: Wherefore art thou, Carmela?

Romano's Macaroni Grill, like many other chain restaurants, has a particular shtick. In this case it's the bottle of house wine that's brought and left on the table, inviting the diner to pour glasses at will and to pay on an honor system at the end. There's also the giant plastic bottle of olive oil next to the salt and pepper shakers, and the server who pours that oil into a dish and writes her name in crayon on the paper tablecloth upon arrival.

Soon after ordering, "Tuscan bread" arrives to the table, a hot, fat, fluffy loaf with a slick of salt, oil, and dried herbs on the outside and the texture of a commercial hot dog bun inside. The diner and her companions are encouraged to tear off pieces of this bread and to dip them into the aforementioned dish of olive oil, which the server has also seasoned with pepper and salt.

While the diners are chewing on the second loaf, the entrees arrive. Above is "Carmela's Chicken Rigatoni": chicken, mushrooms, and caramelized onions in a Marsala wine sauce over rigatoni pasta. It is about what one might expect from a chain restaurant: everything done correctly and adequately, but without soul.

Despite knowing that chain restaurants are more for consistency than heart, this diner desperately wanted to taste something personal in the pasta she was eating…to see, somehow, that Carmela is a real person cooking behind the stove. But in a place like Macaroni Grill, that wish is nothing but silly.

Hanging out in Hiroko's Place

I don't remember when I first read about Hiroko's Place, but ever since I did I'd been wanting to check it out. It seemed to have such a great combination of appealing elements: inexpensive, home-style Japanese fare; good coffee; shelves of books and couches to read them on; a quirky and cozy atmosphere. When I met up with RT and RL to have dinner there near the end of winter break, I discovered the place was even more charming than I expected—it was like some hip Asian grandmother's living room.

I arrived about half an hour early, having given up on strolling the neighborhood once the sun set and the night turned dark and icy. After settling myself on the couch with a menu, I noticed that Hiroko's Place offered coffee brewed using a siphoning method which I had never seen before. Though the prices were a little high (the above, a large, was $4.25), I ordered myself a mocha, which was noted as being unflavored and unsweetened. Watching the brewing process was fascinating—I totally went back to my high school science experiment days—and the mug I was served was filled with coffee that was very smooth, clean, and rich tasting with an edge of bitter chocolate.

Once RT and RL arrived, we moved to a table to have our meal. I went with the kino-tara spaghetti, which was spaghetti in salted cod roe with an assortment of mushrooms and mixed vegetables. Rather than being creamy as I had expected, this dish was more like a stir-fry of spag and veg, and it came with a scoop of Japanese-style potato salad on the side. Simple but enjoyable.

RL added on a ladle of Japanese chicken curry over her omelette-wrapped fried rice; hers also came with a scoop of potato salad. RT went with the seafood gratin over macaroni, which reminded me of some kind of baked seafood mac and cheese. I didn't sample either of them, but they looked good, and both RT and RL seemed to enjoy their dishes.

For dessert the three of us split a green tea parfait and a green tea cake. The parfait was beautifully layered with assorted fruit, sweetened red beans, whipped cream, green tea ice cream, and corn flakes—a touch that in its incongruity seemed quintessentially Asian to me. In both desserts the ice cream was a little icy, and the green tea roulade was slightly dry and didn't seem like it had been baked in-house, though I'm not certain. Didn't stop us from finishing it all, though.

We lingered for a while after our plates were cleared, and the place seemed exactly right for doing so. The service was consistently friendly, our water glasses were continually refilled without our prompting, and no one seemed antsy about us staying that long. We left a large tip in thanks.

Meandering in Montreal, Part 1: Eggspectation, Marche Jean-Talon, L'Express, Second Cup, and Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill

So maybe Montreal wasn't the best idea for a mid-January getaway from NYC. In my defense, it was probably 60 degrees in Fort Collins when I first made the plans with TL, TVD, and AS to go, and I have this inability to imagine shivering and being ridiculously cold when I'm sitting around in a tank top with the sun shining. How bad could it get, I figured?

When there's gusting wind, a thick layer of snow on the ground, and temperatures hovering in the teens: Bad, I tell you, bad.

Luckily, Saturday morning after our teeth-chattering, late-night arrival to Montreal in our rental car, there was breakfast. A good hot one, consumed at Eggspectation, a spacious "resto-cafe-bar" only several streets away from our hotel. As you might suppose from its name, the menu of Eggspectation is full of terrible egg puns, which of course I loved—no yolk!

I opted for the "California Benedict," which threw smoked salmon, spinach, asparagus, and whole wheat bread into the classic poached egg and hollandaise equation; as usual, I didn't care for the sauce so I'm glad I asked for it on the side. The benedict came on a pile of fried potato rounds, which you can't see in this photo, but were good. Altogether the four of us had a pretty solid breakfast, and thus fortified we went off to explore the Francophone city.

First stop was Marche Jean-Talon, a popular indoor food market I'd read about in Zach Brook's post on Serious Eats. It's fun, with coffee and pastry shops surrounding stands of beautifully arranged produce, but as we didn't have any reason to buy anything we didn't stay long.


We ended up in Chinatown next, where TVD went on an epic paper umbrella hunt on behalf of her Vietnamese traditional dance team, and I peered into all the windows of the restaurants and bakeries. Montreal's Chinatown isn't large—maybe covering only a few streets—but seemed fairly diverse. The area was filled with tourists and locals alike, turning the uncleared snow on the ground into wet slush.

We hung out in Chinatown until TL's old friend CM and her significant other met up with us for lunch. I was psyched when they suggested going to L'Express, since I had noted it as one of the restaurants I wanted to try.

L'Express is a very French-feeling place, with classic dishes and preparations. After we placed our orders, out came a giant mason jar of cornichons and baskets of amazing bread and good butter; I could have made a meal of these three items alone. The crusty bread had great toasty flavor and a chewy crumb that I simply could not get enough of.

I had read Orangette's loving ode to céleri rémoulade only a few weeks earlier, so when I spotted the creamy celery root salad on the menu I couldn't resist ordering it. I'd never tried this preparation before, and the dish was as she had described: a clean crunch in a rich dressing, a good accompaniment and starter dish. The recipe Molly posted for céleri rémoulade didn't include capers, but in L'Express's version they were there and added a nice pop and brightness.


Three of us went with the croque monsieur, a hot griddled sandwich of ham and swiss cheese and béchamel. They came with a pile of excellent fries that were crisp and hearty with potato flavor, and I enjoyed the sandwich as well, which even made me a little nostalgic. The last time I'd had a croque monsieur was when I was in college studying abroad for a semester in London; my friends and I went to Paris for one weekend. At the restaurants, the croque monsieur was typically one of the cheapest items on the menu, so that's what I would eat. I wished L'Express had offered a croque madame, too—the same sandwich but with a fried or poached egg on top—but at the same time, that's really just overkill. The plate was rich enough as it was.

Something sweet was in order after that, so TL and I split a serving of orange flan, topped with candied peels and floating in a citrus-scented caramel. Light, creamy, and brightly flavored: it was a nice end to the meal.

We parted ways with CM and spent the rest of the afternoon walking along Rue Mont-Royal and Boulevard St-Laurent. After a while, the weather became so cold none of us could feel our faces anymore. It was time to turn back, but by then we had wandered so far from our car that we had to duck into a branch of Second Cup—a Starbucks-like coffee chain—to warm up before continuing the rest of the way.

Back at the hotel, all four of us nearly immediately passed out on the beds, not to wake until several hours later. We had gotten up early that morning, and it had caught up with us at last.

Finally, we roused ourselves and headed out in search of dinner. Since it was already quite late in the evening, our hotel concierge recommended we go to the nearby Upstairs Jazz Bar & Grill where we could have a meal, take in some music, and have drinks without wasting time moving from place to place. This turned out to be a fine suggestion, as the place was intimate, the food satisfying, and the performance relaxed and friendly.

I had the pappardelle verona, flat pasta ribbons tossed with chicken, sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, and garlic in a white-wine cream sauce. It was a little strange to eat in near-darkness (you know how I feel about eating in the dark) but the meal was otherwise quite decent.

We moved on after that to a different sort of club—one I probably shouldn't mention here. Let's just end this one with us getting back to the hotel late and then passing out. The next day, we'd only have half a day left in Montreal…

Next: Meandering in Montreal, Part 2