tonight's italian candidates

[katbert]

Someone's taking me out to Italian and I'd like to go to all of the restaurants listed below so I thought I'd see if egullet could pick one. The restaurant with the most votes (from different posters) by 4pm is the one I'll try to go to tonight- I forget which take reservations. In alphabetical order:

La Locanda in Old City

L'Angolo in S. PHL

Melograno in CC

Mr. Martino's Trattoria in S. PHL

Trattoria Primadonna in CC

thanks, kt

[sara]

I went to Melograno last night, and La Locanda last week. Between the two, I'd choose Melograno, but didn't think either was spectacular.

You should know that Melograno is VERY noisy, and the service is less than friendly. I had the roasted artichoke appetizer w/ scallops (excellent, definitely a dish to try), the seafood stew (merely ok), and the chocolate souffle (delicious). My friend had the argula, pear, blue cheese salad special, and the pork loin--I thought both were merely ok. We shared a tempranillo, which went well.

At La Locanda, we shareda totally forgettable pasta, and I had the osso buco, which again was just ok--tho was much better reheated the second day.

Sorry I haven't been to any of the others. But why isn't Porcini on the list--that would be my choice.

[gabe]

My vote would be for L'Angolo. La Locanda is pretty cute, but I haven't been back since Chef Giuseppe died (mere hours after my fiancee and I had an extraordinary meal there).

[herbacidal]

of your list, the only ones i've been to are locanda and martino's.

i really liked the osso buco i had at locanda, and martino's is nice as a little romantic little family run place.

based on my impression of what you want and etc., i'd go for l'angolo.

[KatieLoeb]

KT:

Another vote here for L'Angolo. I'm having dinner there tomorrow evening myself. The food, level of service, etc. is far beyond what I normally expect for a little corner BYOB. I've been there about three or four times already and haven't had a bad meal yet.

Another suggestion not on your list would be Langostino at Front & Morris. Cute place, reasonable prices and very good food in generous portions.

Edited November 21, 2003 by KatieLoeb (log)

[davidbdesilva]

Another vote for L'Angolo, very good Italian food in my opinion. I'll add another: if anyone is ever out in the 'burbs in my neck of the woods try Il Melograno in Doylestown. Very good food from a lovely family from the Apuglia region of Italy. Have to get myself back to L'Angolo though, I had the best veal chop there, it was dee-lish.

[gabe]

So Katbert, what did you decide on and how was it?

[katbert]

We couldn't get into L'Angolo until fairly late at night, so instead I took up Katie's suggestion of Langostino's @ Front & Morris. It was moderately busy through the evening, and a little on the cool inside. Bread took a little while to come out but it was fabulous and burning hot. Dippy: olive oil, balsamic, 5 olives. We tried the appetizer portion of the langostinos-- tasty: split, grilled, topped with diced tomatoes & capers, but I don't recommend them for value for the $ (I couldn't help but compare them with the giant (~7in) prawns that I had in Bangkok last week-- if you can go, you should).

The mains otoh were great in the value for $ category: veal scallopine w/ peppers & mushrooms and linguine w/ lump crab and salmon in a cognac sauce. Ok, so personally, I've always considered veal to be a slippery taste androgynous version of a thin pork chop and I've never been wowed by it; this version was pretty tasty by virtue of the peppers. The veal was accompanied by good smoky greens and average mashed potatoes. For the linguine, I'm guesstimating there was at least 2/3 lb of pasta on the plate. Cooked perfectly al dente, with a healthy amount of crab and salmon, and the cognac sauce was light but interesting-- we finished out the veal but took half the pasta home and had to be rolled out of the restaurant.

I would have liked some portion control for the pasta-- I think few individuals could contemplate finishing the plate in one sitting and not everyone likes to doggie bag or waste food. Next time a half order would be appropriate, even for two people if I had appetizers and wanted room for dessert. Service was fine, and we brought a bottle of Estancia merlot 2000 to try (thumbs up).

S: I don't know why Porcini isn't on my list-- I think just b/c I walk by it all the time. Also someone at work keeps raving about La Viola.

thanks for the help, I have to go buy cheesecake ingredients now.

kt

[KatieLoeb]

Kt:

Glad you enjoyed Langostino. I think that's a place that gets overlooked a lot because it's so far off the beaten track. But the food is quite good and I'm glad you had a good experience there as well.

My dinner at L'Angolo on Saturday evening was quite satisfactory as well. Since we were a larger party of 6 persons we had a rather early reservation at 5:00 PM. When we were all finally assembled, the waiter recited all the specials very professionally. Ended up sharing an antipasto mixto with the table, several spinach and portobello salads and I had a half order of the lobster ravioli with cream sauce. All very good to excellent. For dinner I ordered one of the specials, which was a veal brasciole with ricotta gnocchi. The gnocchi and the tomato sauce were both delicious, but I must confess that the three brasciole were a bit dry. My fellow diners had an excellent veal chop with wild mushrooms, a chicken dish with a caper and fresh chopped vegetable topping, another fish special that had grilled striped bass, grilled calamari and grilled shrimp. Everyone was very pleased with their entrees. For dessert we shared Pumpkin Gelato and a chocolate torte that was as rich as fudge. Truly outrageously delicious. Everyone agreed it was an excellent restaurant and that it was an exceptional value. Hopefully you'll be able to try L'Angolo some other time.

[katbert]

We finally made it to L'Angolo last night; the food was very good and we would definitely go back to try more of the menu. We started with calamari (tender) and shrimp in spicy tomato broth; the tomato broth seemed lightly spicy until late in the dish I had an encounter with a pepper that made me cry. [Here's a problem that I often seem to have in Italian restaurants-- I like the really hot crusty bread so much that often I just want to eat the bread with the olive oil or sauce or broth from my appetizer and I have a hard time restraining myself from just eating the bread and subsequently being too full for my entree.] Enjoyed the entrees of (great) gnocchi w/ shrimp and also a special of veal ravioli (both pastas were in a cream sauce). I don't eat much veal and ravioli probably isn't its best treatment- I think I may give up on veal completely though. Also loved the chocolate truffle torte w/ raspberry sauce. We ran out of time to get a bottle of wine, and received complimentary glasses on the house which turned out to be quite nice.

Ambience= busy and buzzing for a Tuesday night late ~9pm, unfortunately the large (>20) party on the far side of the room had a loud out of control singing chick that killed the atmosphere for the rest of us- they were embarrassed but didn't gag her.

kt