Emmy's Spaghetti Shack

For my last dinner in SF and for dinner with A and E, we wanted something different and interesting. J had told J about this spaghetti shack place that had amazing spaghetti with amazing meatballs. We were all intrigued. So we headed over to Emmy's Spaghetti Shack in Bernal Heights to try some of this illustrious spaghetti. I read that there would be a wait, but I was optimistic. First problem was trying to find a parking spot. That took awhile. When we finally got there, there weren't other people waiting. We thought we'd get to eat right away! Wrong! There was actually a huge table ahead of us, so we had to wait. We walked around a bit looking for other alternatives, then just decided to have some drinks at the bar. Eventually, we were seated.
Some complimentary bread while we looked over this simple menu. Although they do have a few other options, we were here for the spaghetti and meatballs.
A and E ordered the grilled polenta with sauteed mushrooms and mascarpone drizzled with truffle honey. Yum. I love me some polenta! J had never had polenta before. Or he didn't know if he had ever had polenta before. He officially likes polenta now!
J and I ordered the arugula, pear, and crispy speck salad with blue cheese crostini and caramelized shallots. We didn't know what crispy speck was. It's bacon! This salad was practically perfect, as long as you avoided the blue cheese. :-)
Ok, so the spaghetti! We all got the spaghetti with meatballs. You get three ginormous meatballs. The sauce is a bit on the spicy side, which surprised all of us. One would think Emmy's would want the diner to control the level of spiciness, but instead, Emmy's just makes the sauce spicy. I like spice so I didn't mind it. J would have preferred it to not be spicy, but he liked it anyway. These meatballs were quite good, but they were not the typical meatballs you would have expected in spaghetti. Normally, italian meatballs tend to be more juicy and made with egg and breadcrumbs and things like that. The thing that was unexpected about these were that when you would take a hunk off of the meatball, the whole thing would sort start falling apart. And you would see the ground meat marks in the meatball. As if it was just a plain wad of meat that was formed into a ball, instead of it having been combined with spices and breadcrumbs and egg and mixed well before being formed into a ball. It was just strange, but still tasty.

So the service... oh the service. Where do I start? Ok, so our server was nice, but he was a terrible waiter. He made two huge mistakes. First, he took our drink orders and completely forgot about it. We waited and waited and waited. And then we had to ask him about it. Then it dawned on him that he'd completely forgotten about it. Oops number one. Then next, he completely forgot to put in E's spaghetti order. So J and I had our plate, A had her plate, but E was spaghetti-less. And we were all starving so we started eating, while he had nothing to eat. And again, our waiter was totally clueless that he had forgotten about it. So then awhile later he came over, apologized, and said he would take care of E's drink. Remember, the drink that was part of all the drinks that he'd forgotten about? ~Sigh~ Eventually, E's spaghetti came out. This was after the rest of us were pretty much done our meals. We'll definitely remember this meal. Not necessarily for the food, but for the awful waiter!

It's Hard To Find Dinner

It's funny. I came all the way to Basel to work with one of my customers. There were 4 people I was working with, and not one of them was Swiss! we had a Brit, a German, a Croatian, and a Brazilian, but not one Swiss. After meeting up with my Brazilian colleague, we set off to find some food for dinner. While I was walking around some more in Basel, I had come upon this cool looking rock-n-roll type place on a little side street up a hill. We tried this place first and we couldn't eat there because they were having a special event in the dining room upstairs. The only place we could hang out was the bar area and that was full and packed. So we moved on. It was my colleague's turn next so we walked a little bit to another cool looking spot. We weren't sure if they served food or not, so we asked. Although they did have a food menu, it was really just appetizers or steak. We really weren't in the mood for either. So we tried again! We went next door to another place and they told us they had just closed the kitchen. Dammit. Were we going to get to eat tonight? The lady who had just rejected us kindly told us that the pizza place across the street would still have food. So we said ok, because honestly, we simply couldn't take any more of this food rejection!

This is how we ended up at Centro. When we got there, the place was positively packed! And this made sense to me because even though there are so many other restaurants in Basel, apparently, it's quite a challenge to actually eat in any of them! Centro is an italian joint. They have pizza and pasta and other italian fare. When we first looked at the menu, it was really hard to figure out what was going on. The dishes were named in italian and they were described in swiss german. Although it's fine for me to figure out that lasagne is lasagne and that penne is penne, it was what was on them / in them that was hard to figure out from the swiss german. Eventually, I got an english menu and was finally good to go!I ordered the penne centro, which was penne with chicken and pepperoni in a creamy tomato sauce. It took forever for our food to come out. And we were both so damn hungry at this point. But it was totally worth the wait. I loved this dish! The sauce was perfect and although there wasn't that much chicken, what chicken there was was perfect. I ate the whole thing. As in I cleaned the plate. Yes, I stuffed myself silly. And if there had been more, I would have eaten more, as it was an amazing pasta dish. I don't actually recall pepperoni being in this, but I didn't care. And it looks like a hot damn mess in this plate, but trust me, it was damn good. If I'm ever in Basel again, I would get this again!

Dinner Party Time!

On friday night, I had the honor of attending a lovely dinner party by R, teacher of young children and awesome dinner party thrower, extraordinaire. Can I just tell you how awesome his condo is? It's just awesome. I love everything about it. When I dream about the type of condo I would like to have, it's just like R's condo. Damn him. Not only the condo itself, but everything he has in it. If he ever wanted to trade, I would totally let him have my house. Really. No joke.
A variety of delicious cheese and crackers, pate, nuts, and olives. Wait till you see what else he made for this party. And he made it all himself. And the crazy thing is that he said he cooks like this every night. How can anyone cook like this every night? I'd need an extra 4 hours in my day! My jealousy grows...
A couple more appetizers... Chorizo with a shallot, onion, and apple reduction. Um, hello, can we say delicious? And some type of shrimp based appetizer housed in adorable little red endive leaves. Again, delicious. Who has time to make stuff like these? And we all adored the human pincushion toothpick holder.

A gorgeous antipasti with lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, mozzarella, artichoke, peperoncini stuffed with ham and cheese, and all of it topped with the loveliest and thinnest slices of proscuitto. I took this picture before it was drizzled with olive oil and balsamic. Goodness. If all salads are like this, then I could agree to eat salads all the time.

For the main course, R outdid himself. Slow braised short ribs with wine and an apple based sauce. It was super tender and so heavily flavored and amazing. It was served on top of mascarpone polenta. And served with some haricot verts. Again, can I ask, who cooks like this? I would end up eating at 1AM. Everything was amazing.
Just when you think you're done, he laid these little puppies on us. Lemons filled with lemon curd, topped with lemon meringue. And at the bottom of these tasty little treats, crushed graham crackers. Unbelievable. Truly unbelievable. If all dinner parties are like this, please, please invite me to your dinner parties. I am an excellent guest. I will sing and dance if you ask. I will bring cake (like the mocha cake). I will help clean. Really. And as for R, he can invite me over any time. It was definitely a dinner party to remember. My stomach won't ever forget it!

Orwigsburg Dining

I headed up to the Pottsville area over the weekend to crash a wedding. After my drive, I was starving. So we walked a few blocks to downtown Orwigsburg for some small town eats. Valenti's is an italian joint, and apparently, they bake their own bread.
C got a side salad with mozzarella cheese. This actually looked like a pretty amazing salad. I did taste some, and it was really good. The dressing was great. But the amount of cheese was ridiculous. This starts a theme of heavy cheese.
J got the fresh turkey club sandwich. This is tons of food. It was a pretty good sandwich. These chips were amazing! They looked homemade. Homemade or not, they were super crunchy and not too salty and quite great. I ate too many.
I really wanted a sausage sandwich so I got this sausage parm with sweet peppers. Can you see any sausage or peppers or bread? Not really, as it was positively drenched with mozzarella cheese. There were about 3 slices of cheese on the bottom, then some sausage and peppers and sauce, and then a few more slices of cheese on the top. It was just beyond a ridiculous helping of cheese. It was more like a cheese sandwich with some sausage and bread. I ended up scraping most of the cheese off. It's a shame really, because the sandwich itself was fine. It was just hard to eat and had to be severely edited to attempt enjoyment. Take our advice Valenti's, ease up on the cheese. It's just not necessary.

Valenti's Pizza
218 W Market St
Orwigsburg, PA 17961
(570) 366-1408

Mangia-ing at Maggiano's

We had to make a highly unplanned trip to the mall so that R could buy some bidness clothes. Well, we didn't actually end up finding any, but we did get hungry. So they made me go to Maggiano's. There aren't that many options at 9PM! The food court is closed and you know, the other choices are just as chainy.

R did us all a big favor and asked for a pitcher of water for the table. Oh boy. Our server said no, but then he made it a point to fill each of our glasses with every sip we took. And he filled it to the tippy top. This was a point of amusement for the whole entire evening.

Calimari! H/A orders appetizers last minute without planning. This is just what he does. Apparently, he can't not order appetizers. I'm not an appetizer person. I want the main event. But this calimari was quite good.

The ravioli. This normally comes with an alfredo sauce, but none of us were into that, so we asked for it to be made with marinara. The ravioli themselves were good, but the sauce was strangely sweet. Still ok, but unexpectedly sweet.

The baked ziti and sausage. This sauce was not sweet! I really enjoyed the sausage in this. There were little tiny bits of sausage in there. I wish there had been more... they seem to skimp on the meat here.

I enjoyed the food here, but it's not like amazing. It's just ok. And the prices are ok too, but just ok, not cheap. And you get decent amounts of food. The service was a bit overzealous, due to the water incident. But there was a severe lack of communication due to our server's lack of proficiency with the english language. When H/A wanted the rest of the ziti packed up, nothing happened. Bye bye ziti.

Angelo's

Last weekend, I hung out in some faraway burbs after going to a little art reception in the middle of nowhere. I was in bryn athyn, which has a crazy story. As in entire town of inbred swedes. Seriously. In any case, we grabbed some vittles after nearby.
Angelo's is an italian joint in some random suburban stripmall. I wasn't sure if it was open because there were no cars around. But it was early, so I guess that made sense. The place is very old school on the inside. Not swanky. It's very laid back here.
So yeah, it's italian food. Standard stuff. Me? I got eggplant parm. You get a salad too, and some bread. This salad was kind of sad, but you know it's just something accompanying the main event. My eggplant parm was great. Just old fashioned and hearty.
R got the veal parm. A very sizeable hunk of veal. And we both got giant heaps of pasta with it. The spaghetti wasn't round, it was square or rectangular, which made us think that it may have been homemade, but that's just a guess. This place might not be that fancy.
The service was not that hot. Getting the server to run our check took forever. We kept wanting to pay and give them our money, but it's like they weren't having any of it. And they never offered us any refills on drinks. Not soda and not water either. Service is definitely not the high point here. That is the food. It's a nice neighborhood joint for a hearty affordable meal.

Angelo's Ristorante
11036 Rennard St
Philadelphia, PA 19116
(215) 677-3432

Hankering for Pasta

Some days, I just hanker for something. Something very specific. The other week I wanted spaghetti with italian sausage. And I wanted it bad. So I whipped some up. It's easy! Here's what you need:

Italian sausage

Onions - sliced, chopped, whatever

Pasta

Jar of spaghetti sauce

Throw the onions and the sausage in a pan, skillet, whatever you want to cook on. I just bought some sweet italian sausage, but I could have used hot just as easily. Depends on my mood. There's tons of way to cook the sausage, but this is just the way I did it. I should have cut up the sausage into smaller pieces, but I just cut it up into bigger chunks. And then while cooking, I just cut them up even more. It would probably have been easier to cut it up first with a proper knife.Then once the sausage and onions are cooked through, just dump a jar of spaghetti sauce in there. Whatever flavor you like. Heat this up a bit and then after your pasta is cooked the way you want, dump the sauce over the pasta. Then proceed eating. This obviously makes a ton. It lasted me for days!

Sure looks like a hot mess, but it certainly tasted great. It's super easy to prepare and nice and hearty!

Whoa... Portillo's...

I was in Chicago for the day to visit a potential client (very famous cup maker) and had to have lunch. J is very familiar with Chicago, so he wanted to take me to an institution - Portillo's. This place is beyond busy during lunch. I mean seriously. There is a drive-thru and that had a long ass line. And inside, there are multiple sections (sandwich line, pasta line, salad line) and all the lines were long. But they know how to run a tight ship.
There's tons of space to eat in. The decorations are wacky. That's a giant bra hanging on a clothesline. Random. When you order in the sandwich line, long before the registers, a guy takes your order and writes it in shorthand on a takeout bag. So at the register, you only pay. Then you get a number and then wait to pick it up on the pick up side. You really don't have to wait that long, which is impressive considering how many people there are. It's like a machine!
So what did we get? The combo sandwich - with a giant heap of italian beef with gravy, grilled sausage, mozzarella, and sweet peppers. You can pick your choice of cheese and whether you want peppers or not. So um... this sandwich is big. And it has tons of the italian beef. And I ate the whole thing. And I certainly shouldn't have, but I couldn't help myself, it was so freakin good. Like seriously good. Like I could eat this all the time, if it weren't for the fact that it can't possibly be good for you. But you know I would. If you're ever in Chicago and want an iconic sandwich, stop in Portillo's and stuff your gourd. You will leave happy!

The Warehouse

So after the singing, and after eating at old city pizza, I had to go to dinner again. I know, I just ate, but we had to meet peeps for dinner! So with my still full belly, we headed over to the Spaghetti Warehouse to meet with some seminarians. Yes, you heard that right, seminarians. Priests-in-training, fathers-to-be... Not people I typically spend my saturday nights with. And yes, that's right, I said Spaghetti Warehouse. A place I would never ever choose to go to if I didn't have to. In fact, every time I drive past it, I joke about eating there. In fact, I'd sooner choose the Olive Garden. [I do have to give them at least some credit, their website is meatballs.com. Ha!]

So the Spaghetti Warehouse. It's a chain. It's seriously a warehouse. The space is ginormous, with super high ceilings, and space beyond reason. We did sit in the trolley car though. Yes, the place is so big it can fit a trolley car. And then some.

You get some complimentary freshly baked sourdough bread. So ok, the bread is not bad. And it comes with an herby butter. Nothing bad about any of this. In order to withstand this experience, we did need some serious liquid action. I had an amazing strawberry daiquiri. I downed this way too fast.

The Turin Trio. Obviously not something that one normal human could eat. They are of the gigantic portion world here. It's a huge heap of their 15-layer lasagna, fettuccini alfredo, and chicken parm. It's seriously a lot of food. Even the priest-to-be could not muster the powers above to put much of a dent in this thing.

The other priest-to-be just got the 15-layer lasagna. Yeah, that's one entree. It's enough for an entire seminary, don't you think? He tried, but he had plenty to take home.

J got the chicken marsala. While the chicken itself seemed to be cooked just fine, the sauce was just way too thick and sweet. Perhaps this came out of a can or a jar? It just didn't seem typical of chicken marsala. I've seen chicken marsala dozens of times, and it's never been like this.

As for me, I wasn't hungry at all. But I felt like food had to be ordered. So I got the soup and salad. The salad was fine, but the dressing was just too much. It was italian and just drowning my iceberg (which I actually like) and obviously out of a generic bottle. The soup choices were italian wedding and minestrone. I asked the waitress which was better and she said italian wedding. Ugh. This soup was so beyond bland it was nuts. Ok, so the little sausage balls, or whatever those balls were, they actually had flavor and were somewhat tasty. But the rest of the soup, or the 98% remaining, was bland beyond all get out. It's shocking that they can pass this slop off as soup.

In addition to my strawberry daiquiri and some beers, we ended up having a couple of Sidecars. The waitress and the bartender didn't really know what they were, and in reality, neither did any of us. But with the trusty aid of the interwebs, we had the bartender whip up some cognac based Sidecars. The priest-to-be who wanted the Sidecars in the first place, said this was a man's drink. And then when we got them, they were served in these girly glasses. So perhaps its man-ness needs to be reconsidered. But damn, this was a fine drink. And at the Spaghetti Warehouse no less. The service was good. Our waitress was friendly and she appreciated that we weren't using a coupon. We're probably not the typical crowd here, so she seemed to enjoy us. There is a high percentage of coupon using clientele here. Sitting in the trolley car was pretty cool though. We also saw a little old lady fall over while we were eating. She caused quite the commotion, but ended up being ok. I still can't believe I ate at the Spaghetti Warehouse. Sure, you get tons of food for the price (and who can knock value these days), but I'm going to go back to avoiding this place again. Because it was what I expected!

Post 80's Eats

On Saturday, R and I took in some impromptu culture by experiencing some hilarious 80's songs being sung by boys who like boys. It was fantastic, hilarious, and thoroughly entertaining. Neither of us got to eat beforehand, so afterwards, we had to eat, stat. We headed over to old city to meet up with E, and then walked to old city pizza. I'm thinking the place is run by greeks, as they had baklava and the like as dessert options. E got chicken fingers. She said they're pretty good. Since she lives around here, she's eaten from here plenty of times.

R got a pizza, half plain, half white. For such a small pizza with only seemingly 3 ingredients or so, this certainly took a long time to come out. Both E and I were pretty much done with our food before this pizza was brought out. We really think they probably forgot about it. It was pretty greasy looking too.

As for me, I got ravioli with sausage. I also got some complimentary bread with my entree. The ravioli were actually quite good, so was the sauce. They forgot to bring out the sausage initially, so I got them after the ravioli came out. The sausage was weird. But since I was starving, I ate it anyway. But were it not for my being famished, I probably wouldn't have. The sausage was too mushy. It was just not normal.

Service... eh. Not too hot, but what do you expect, it's pretty much a pizza take-out joint.

Old City Pizza

100 N 3rd St
Philadelphia, PA 19106

(215) 574-9494‎

Mama Carolla's

After only having eaten DQ, we actually needed real food once we got back to Indianapolis. Wouldn't you know it started thundering and pouring on our drive back, making it all the more precarious. J has friends in the food industry who live in Indianapolis, so he made a call and because we felt like Italian, the friend recommended Mama Carolla's.

The place is pretty cool. It's in an old house that was a model home for some spanish villa type houses that got built back in the day. The house was super cool, I would dream of having a house like that. We got seated in an upstairs nook looking kind of area of the house.

We started off with a fried ravioli appetizer. Very hot (temperature) and very tasty.

J went old school, and got spaghetti with italian sausage. I was impressed with his ability to house this.
I got the Chef Mike's "Pasta Too Good", which was penne tossed with chicken, shrimp, broccoli, tomatoes, and garlic. It was just what I wanted, nothing too heavy, but still very flavorful. Service was just ok. There was a serious cold draft where we were sitting, so neither of us enjoyed that so much. But it was a great dinner of solid italian food.

Pastaimprovization

I really wanted some pasta the other night. It was a serious craving. So I decided to just throw together a giant vat of pasta so I could eat it for days. I had some bacon, so I took half of a small pack of bacon and chopped it up, along with half an onion. And I fried all this up together. No need to add oil, as the bacon has plenty of fat on its own to help cook the onions. I cooked this enough so that the bacon was thoroughly cooked, and on its way to being crunchy.

Then I dumped in a jar of already prepared vodka sauce and simmered this for awhile. And when I felt it was nearly done, I dumped in some frozen sweet peas. Once the peas were cooked through, I dumped the sauce over a giant pot of rigatoni that I had cooked and drained.

Mix it all together and you have a several-day supply of pasta that will make your tummy happy. The sauce is tangy and the bacon gives it a really nice smoky kick. And I just like peas and it adds a nice pop of color and veg, which always makes me think that I'm being healthy.

La Dolce Meh

When I got back to Philly, one of the first things I did was get my hair cut. It was luxurious to finally be able to do that. Afterwards, we wanted to eat and drove around and around looking for something. Traffic was horrible that night, I felt like I was driving around for at least an hour. We wanted to go to this italian byob in old city, but even though we got there early, they said they were booked for the entire night. Boo! So after walking around some more, we finally just decided to get food at Dolce. It's in old city too, next to Paradigm. I think they are sister restaurants, as there's a hallway between the two that connects them.

Anyhoo, we ate at Dolce, which is italian. It was right after restaurant week, but some restaurants had decided to continue the restaurant week menu. Dolce was one of them. So one of us did end up getting a restaurant week menu option.
The appetizer was smoked mozzarella wrapped with prosciutto with a cherry chutney. I think these creeped me out, because they looked like fingers. As for the taste, they were kinda weird. The ham was sliced so thick that it was pretty much overpowering anything else, like the cheese. And the chutney was too sweet. Not the greatest appetizer I've tasted.
R got the gnocchi duo. Half in a red sauce, half in a pesto sauce. We both agreed that the red sauced ones were better. The pesto was bland and it seemed that in general, the gnocchi had been overcooked.
I had rigatoni with shrimp in vodka sauce. This was quite good. The sauce was strong, but in a good way. I didn't even end up eating all the shrimp. Strangely, I didn't feel they were really necessary.  It would have been fine as just a big plate of pasta. 
The dessert that came with the restaurant week menu was a trio. It had tiramisu, cannoli, and bread pudding. R liked the cannoli a lot. I'm not into tiramisu, but she thought it was ok. I liked the bread pudding the best, which is made from croissants. Yum!

This place is dark. Too dark. You can't read the menu. The floor is all lit up, like a night club. It's bizarre decor for a restaurant. I think they're trying to be romantic, but it ends up more cheesy. Service was ok though, no complaints there. I probably won't be going back though. I think there are probably much better italian options elsewhere in Philadelphia.  Certainly more homey.

OMG - Grinders

When talking with colleagues, the subject of food always comes up. And more than once, various people kept talking about this Grinders place. Grinders, Grinders, let's go to Grinders. After B started going off about it and how we had to go on Friday, a whole slew of us made the trek all the way down there to get some giant honkin sandwiches.

They have a ghetto website. It's so darn ghetto, just look at it! And they have odd hours. Or namely, only certain days that they're open. So be sure to check before you go. Judging by the website, I thought the actual Grinders would be a ghetto dump. Boy, was I wrong! The place is adorable! So dont' let the website fool you. It's like an adorable little bistro, complete with lots of b&w photos of musicians. It's a really cool place with an open kitchen.

So you go for their ginormous sandwiches, or their grinders. Like this one, the chicken pesto grinder, with chicken, fresh pesto, tossed with grilled onions, portabella mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, garlic, basil, finished with feta and mozarella. All on an italian roll from new jersey. Seriously, new jersey.

It seems like their meatball grinders are extremely popular, as the majority of our party ended up getting one. I wanted to get a taste of everything I could, so I got the sauball, which has meatballs and italian sausage. What can I say, I'm now a big Grinders fan. Everything about this sandwich was delicious, especially their east coast roll. And they have to give you a knife and fork because there isn't any way you're going to be able to eat this, like a regular sandwich. So just be dainty and go bite by tie.

Don't worry, they also have soups and salads and desserts. In fact, one of our other colleagues raves about their chili. These grinders are big, and so they have big pricetags, but trust me, you will be eating it for days. It's enough to feed a small family.

Atlanta Airport Dining

Renting a car in Mexico is not fun. It takes forever, picking it up, or dropping it off. So you best just get used to waiting in lines. Because it took us so long, by the time we got to the airport, they had to pull us out of the line so we could sneak in front of everyone to catch our flight. That's how close we'd cut it. So we had nearly no time to eat.

We grabbed something quick and my turkey and cheese croissant ended up being ok, but R's philly cheesesteak turned out to be atrocious. Note to you all, don't get a philly cheesesteak at the Cancun airport. So when we got to Atlanta and had plenty of time to actually sit down and eat, we went to Chili's. Yes, Chili's. Here's a not-so-secret secret. Whenever I'm at an airport and I need to eat, if there's a Chili's, I'll eat there. Chips and salsa from Chili's. Ok, it's so not the same as when we were in mexico. The chips were thin and greasy and super salty. The salsa was runny. But we still enjoyed it nonetheless.
R's quesadillas.
And yes dammit, I ordered me a salad. Why? Because I'd gone an entire week without eating any uncooked vegetables and my body was actually craving lettuce. And luckily, it was a giant plate of lettuce with a nice sizeable piece of chicken on top. I believe it was the southwestern cobb salad. The only bad part was that they forgot to put bacon on it and I didn't even realize they'd forgotten until I was pretty much done. It's a shame too, because it would have been that much better with heaps of bacon. Dang. But for my first real post-Mexico meal where I could relish in as many raw foods as I possibly could, it was perfect.