This week has brought me to the wonderful warm desert city of scottsdale arizona. Being here on business affords me the opportunity to eat at various restaurants. As a food enthusiast this is awesome for me!
This evenings "treat" was romanos macaroni grill. As someone who is often cynical of american cooking I figured this would be an interesting experience. As some of you know I am somewhat of a snob, and living in europe has not helped this fact. I am very lucky to have been exposed to some very tasty food. Actually being italy (despite the briefness), and tasting foods from Italy has made me quite cynical of the tastes of the common american. By that I mean I expect to have them call something italian and me laughing at them because it is not at all. The same way that hard shell tacos are apparently mexican.
Anyways I went into the restaurant with very low expectations. It was a very interesting atmosphere. I would describe it as South by South ish Italy. There was dim lighting which to me creates a little bit more of a grown up atmosphere, but then they had the paper table clothes and my server (catelyn) demonstrated her ability to write her name upside down.
She asked me if I'd ever been there before - no I hadn't. She then took me on a wonderful tour around my menu. Thanks - I am able to read. I was also offered the opportunity to try the house chianti. No thank you. I asked what was on tap..."peroni, miller, peroni....." (she said peroni twice). Luckily I happen to quite enjoy peroni so I was pretty pumped about that.
On the tour I was also shown that there were some tapas available. First off...totally different genre. Second off, I'm 90 % sure most of those were just something that got thrown in a deep fryer, which was not at all what I wanted. They also had italian nachos available. mmmm nah
I had a difficult time not letting the laughter of cynicism erupt from my mouth.
I had to take some time in choosing and eventually settled on the pollo caprese. Did I want a salad with that...screw it why not.
While waiting I was also brought some bread to enjoy with olive oil. It was ok, but it was the kind of bread that you really don't want to eat after it has cooled off. I then received my salad, with ice still on the bowl. Perfect. I was saving it for after my dinner anyways.
Then my food came...and to be honest it was not near as bad as I thought. It came with real mozzarella pieces and the sauce had a great amount of kick. I was happy to be proven wrong. As far as real food taste it absolutely beats olive garden.
After my dinner I ate the salad and catelyn slides over the desert menu ever so non casually.
I had to laugh at the end, I had few bites left of my chicken breast...did I want that wrapped up. No...this is nothing.
I said no, and no to the desert and got my bill immediatly. I didn't like that because I felt more rushed than I wanted to be. Not that I had a real reason to stay.
I totally felt like a cog in the machine. She didn't give a rats behind whether or not I enjoyed my food. As long as I didn't dis-enjoy it.
In general...great restaurants rarely have TVs in them, and this restaurant had 1.
Also - so many cacti here
No comments:
Post a Comment