Rich Pawlak

I received this e-mail from Mike Noreen, who read our Trenton Restaurants thread, but was unable to post on eG to post this news. Needless to say, we need to get out to this place to keep the Tattoni's flame alive! To wit, Mike's e-mail: Rich, I was checking for Casdeluna on the web and ran across your egullet comments. I registered but couldn’t add a comment(!) but wanted to let you know that I ate at Casdeluna (the old Tattoni’s) last night. I have previously reviewed the restaurant at yelp.com. http://www.yelp.com/biz/-eW5bWmm5tUNuZJP0Z...ojj8QtWzKzfMP6w I ate there with two friends last night (an annual visit) and was disturbed to see the name change. We were there so we figured we would try it. We were the only three in the restaurant. I was greeted by the waitress (assuming she was Mirna Castellanos the owner?) who said it had the same menu. We went in. I was happy to report a fabulous meal! The original owner sold to Mirna and taught them how to cook the original specials. They watched him for a few weeks, then he made them cook them. Last night we had the typical meal, starting with the bruschetta, the salad (meats, cheeses, cantalope, etc.). We then had a fabulous pasta with the marinara sauce (no crab or meat sauce choices though as before) but the portion was 2x what Tattoni’s original was. We had three entrees, the white Chicken Cacciatore, the Roast Pork, and the Veal and Peppers. Mirna said that business was VERY slow, even on the weekends, and I fear this place will succumb to failure if we don’t get the word out. The service was very good, the execution on the meals was excellent. Urge your readers to try it. I hope they can make it!

He most always utilizes a disguise, unless he trusts that he is not at all known to the restaurant, as in a distant suburban place, or an ethnic restaurant.

Brewer Larry Horwitz really knows what he's doing at IH North Wales. His Saison and Biere de Mars are two of his very best efforts to date. Sad to hear about that beer engine; how hard can they be to repair or replace?

I still favor pilsners from Victory, Saranac and Sly Fox. You should be able to get at leat the Victory and Saranac in your neck of the woods.

It's an embarassment of riches out there, Bob, and definitely worth a trailer hauler. Bell's, Capitol AND New Glarus.

Note to Bob: Get a bigger car, or at least, a bigger trunk! New Glarus is worth stockpiling in large quantities; its is as fine a beer in almost every category of style as you will ever drink.

New Glarus is as good as it gets, Bob. You lucky bastard.

Two surprises this week: Saranac Belgian Ale: a mildish Belgian sour to my palate, nice sweetness on the edges, with a nice finish. Destined to be a sweet sumnmer beer if I can find any of it in NJ! Molson Dry: served to me at a neighbor's house a week back; wonderfully crisp, with a nice nutty finish, very refreshing and full of flavor. Shockingly so. I dont think I've had a Molson product in over 20 years, but this was quite delicious!

See that's because they look like a cross-section of a really overworked, um, well, more like a section of your, ah...oh never mind.

No, but it tastes like a spiced version of cabbage and potatoes!

Found this swill at at local package store in NJ. Good God it is awful. A bottle of overspiced bubble and squeak.

And I thought, based on all of the coverage that I have read, that craft brewing sales were up significantly. Having read the Slate piece, it is an awfully written, poorly extrapolated piece of journalism, depsite the prescence of Bryson. I''d be curious if he was quoted properly. doesn't sound like the Lew Bryson that I read everyday at www.lewbryson.com.

OK, I'm officially jealous.

I would try BierKraft in Brooklyn, to start.

There is enough on the menu for a baby to nibble on, but I'd bring baby food just in case. Twins enjoyed: fish & chips, chicken tenders, mozz sticks, rolls, tiny bites of burger and penne pasta and bean soup last time we were there. Mike Scotese the owner keeps promising a childrens' menu soon, but we need to keep prodding him on that. And at least 1 or 2 more high chairs (the GL has one)!

I had been going to the Grey Lodge once a week for over 8 years. All they had then were good micros on tap, landjaegers, tomato pies and these amazing mushroom wraps, filled with fresh mushrooms, swiss and scallions--amazing bar food. Since the arrival of the twins, I've barely been able to get to the Grey Lodge even once a month! But I HAVE eaten through the restaurant menu now (and Ive brought the twins along a few times!) and I cannot go there without ordering: the Red Thai curry mussels, the fries, the cheesesteak, the burger or the spinach salad. Thank God I never go there alone, but rather with willing accomplices. It's hard enough to choose from the tap beer menu.....

Well, ya gotta hope he mentions the Grey Lodge's burger, IMHO, one of the best in the city.

Good God what a gushy piece. Bruni goes ga-ga! Even gushier than any of us!

If either of our twins even began to meltdown, we'd have them up and out of their high chairs in seconds. If they were even remotely fussy, we'd never enter the restaurant.

I grew up in the restaurant business, and my parents took their children out to restaurants frequently from an early age, I am told. They claim that we were always well-behaved, which I find hard to believe. But I am carrying on the tradition. I've had mixed experiences with our almost 2-yr. old twins. We've been taking them to restaurants since they were quite tiny and in infant car seats. I think doing so got them acquainted with the noise and "hum" of restauarants and has helped somewhat to acclimate them. We've taken them to many New Jersey diners, some Mexican places near us, some good pizza places in Trenton and some Asian restaurants (menu items like noodles, rices and dumplings are well suited to toddler palates), as simple as our local, casual Tiger Noodles in Princeton--a terrific restaurant by any measurement--- to Vietnam in Chinatown, Ha Long Bay in Bryn Mawr and Susanna Foo Gourmet Kitchen in Radnor. In the latter two places, they had a meltdown, as they looked for familar Asian faces from Tiger Noodles and didnt find them. We were quick to pick them up and walk them around, and that calmed things down, but did nothing to aleviate the embarassment of their parents. Some restaurants have staffs that quickly surround and welcome the kids, and that always helps, such as Tiger Noodles and Vietnam. But others, like Ha Long Bay and Susanna Foo, well, that just didnt happen, and the staff (with the exception of Foo herself at her place; she was exceptionally sweet and playful with the twins) seemed uncomfortable with the prescence of the kids. We have also taken them for lunch to Amada and Mantra in Center City, breakfast at Meridith's in Berwyn ( a review visit no less, detailed coincidentally in the May issue of MAINLINE Magazine) and dinner at Fleming's Steak House in Radnor and had a delightful time at each. In each case the staffs at these places were into the kids, engaging them, chatting, flirting, and that made a huge difference. They are places to which I would also not hesitate to return. I still do think long and hard before taking our twins out to just any restaurant, but, overall, I think we've been very fortunate to have kids who like all kinds of food, are well behaved in most social situations, and are not overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of a restaurant. And we also have a bag of Cheerios with us at all times; they are the greatest invention of all mankind: a toy , a pacifier and a food all wrapped up in a tiny cereal ring.

There was a nice article in yesterday's Philadelphia Inquirer by Rick Nichols regarding your Capitol Hill market: Rick Nichol's article

Phin and Matt's Extraordinary Ale, Southern Tier Brewing, Lakewood, NY Also newly available in NJ! A very nice hoppy American pale ale, from those creative folks at Southern Tier. I've liked every beer I've ever tried from southern Tier, from thier killer IPA to their Old Man Winter ale, and this APA is no excpetion, with good fresh hop aroma, big ballsy hop profile, and a nice clean finish. Gonna be drinking a lot of this brew this summer.

Gritty McDuff's "Pub Style" Pale Ale, Portland, ME Newly available in bottles in NJ! Who knew Gritty's bottled? I plead ignorance. Now to the beer: This really didnt strike me so much as a pale ale as it did a more robust version of an amber lager; no pronounced hop profile, decent nutty finish, a little over-carbonated, but pleasant enough a beer, and nicely priced at $7.49 a sixer.

I was a guest a wedding recently whose recpetion was held at the Woddbury Country Club in Woodbury, NJ (exit 21 of 295, for perspective). The pass -around hors d'ouvres were quite nice, not the ususal fried, breaded crap, and the dinner buffet was actually quite nicely executed, with organic field green salads, and a nice chick pea salad, surprisingly flavorful chicken marsala, scallops in a creamy roasted tomato sauce, al dente pasta, and carved beef that actually tasted like, well, great, flavorful beef! All in all one of the best wedding receptions, food-wise, that I've ever been to.

So the doings of the restaurant biz make no sense to yiu at all? Stand in line. Restaurateurs do baffling things all the time. Maybe Dom's son just wanted to put his own take on things. But not being smart enough to alert customers with signage or a voicemail when you called for a reservation sounds like par for the course for some cafe owners. They stay open sometimes despite themselves! I'm gonna try to ride over there on Tuesday as well. The curiosity is killing me.