Sal's Famous Italian Kitchen

In looking up Mama Mia today, I found a mention of Sal's Famous Italian Kitchen. Here, it's been in my neighborhood for a couple months now, and I had no idea. So we went by for dinner. We had no problem getting seated at 5, but by the time we left at 6, it was standing room only. They have cocktails, beer and wine, including a cheap decent red in carafe, and the usual salads, appetizers, pizza, pasta, and entrees. Prices top out at $15, though everything but the entrees are ala carte.

The bread basket included a really good focaccia, and a really bad staleish bit of baguette. They have oil and vinegar on the table, as well as full-sized dinner plates -- so, should we use a full-sized plate for a bit of oil and balsamic? They also have a pitcher of ice water on each table, which I really appreciated. Our caesar salad was beautiful, but only okay -- here, I had expected a salad as good as the caesars at Pizzicato (the parent company), but the dressing was heavy-handed. My sweetie had a risotto, which had very little rice in the perfect risotto consistency -- most was over- or under-done. Putting a red sauce with sausage on top only ensured that it was greasy. I had the fettucine carbonara, which had sublime fresh eggy pasta. The pancetta was kinda limp and underdone, and there were big lumps of onions, but as long as I stayed away from them, I was thrilled.

So, it was a mixed bag. Honestly, I felt underwhelmed. There's better homey-italian, and even fancy italian in town, even at these prices.

2731 N. Killingsworth (at Greeley)
(503) 247-0500

posted by vj @ 7:52 PM