Food For Thought

You know when the only words you can read on a menu are “Daily Recommendation” you’re in for a real treat. Atmosphere: Overlooking the Main Terminal of Grand Central Station in New York (fat name drop intro) is a corner restaurant with its own bar, 4 streetlights, and seemingly no kitchen. Welcome to Cipriani Dolci, a pricey Italian restaurant that has succeeded despite heavy local competition (Little Italy AND New York pizza (and yes, I am counting NY pizza as Italian)). The restaurant’s confined space only further accents the ~4 step height gradient between the bar floor and the other section’s floor. Basically, big height gradients and I loved it. Besides the floor, their custom streetlights do little to affect the mellow yellowed archival light coming from the ceiling mural of the Main Terminal anyway. The view from either area is wonderful, and I think the lateness of the hour was the only reason there wasn’t a large hubbub coming from the floor. The chairs were nice, compl...

Have you ever been to a restaurant where they recreate the environment of their food’s origin? If you’d like to, head on over to Amalfi’s Pizza, where they sacrifice floor space to create the feeling of an Italian alleyway and bedazzle the senses. An enchanted alleyway portal to Italy Ignore my brown friend, enjoy the chandeliers! Atmosphere: This place does not skimp on aesthetics. There are fancy booths with deep cushions, a literal hallway entrance that they have painted and decorated, and these cool trees inside that really give the place a fancy vibe. They even do something about the pipes in the ceiling, disguising it by putting wooden buttresses and a fancy chandelier up, instead of just leaving the roof raw (nobody looks at restaurant roofs :( despite the amount of work that goes into them). I like being in areas with chandeliers when I have semi-heavy disposable objects that I can throw and lodge into them. The imp of the perverse drives my every action when the...

A diminutive Italian restaurant in downtown Palo Alto with muted lights and an inviting, concave entrance. With half a menu made up of wines, Vero surprised me with its high classiness/price ratio and friendly servers, and allowed me to have more Italian food, always a plus. Seating: No parking, but I had wandered near there by foot so felt no inconvenience. The tables could hold about 30 people, and started filling up around the time I entered because they recognized me as a famous food critic. At least one family was returning, and the other couple seemed to be enjoying their date. The chairs were weighty and wooden and the server seated us quickly. There was also a bar, which involves too much face-to-face interaction with the bartender to be comfortable. The appetizer, bread and olive oil, also included a dash of red wine, adding flavor to the bread dipped in it. The bread was salty enough to eat by itself plreasureably and went well with the wine-oil, but the hard crust ru...

Glorious. Epcot is a beautiful place to eat, and here especially if you like pasta. I came into the Epcot on a hot winter day (welcome to Florida!) and wandered around a giant Siemens advertisement disguised as an exhibit about the future technology of the world. I looked at the big circle of countries and chose Italy. We passed a bunch of authentic looking ethnic places like China and Mexico on our way, and though we were tired it was worth it in the end. Seating: The servers were Italian, speaking in Italian and a thick accent. Not sure if it was faked but the people were genuinely from Italy. Our servers took us to a shaded area with fans, it was cool and they took our order fast. The appetizers were strange bread with herbs on top and Italian breadsticks which were legit hard sticks. Also solid fresh olives, which can be eaten whole. They have pits but are salty and good in a way if eaten directly. Decor: Wood chairs and patterned bricks match in color, and the kinda d...

Meat Manicotti Seating:  There was no parking. It was a pretty big parking lot, and I had to loop around twice before someone left. Despite that fact, the line inside was only 5 minutes long. There was a girl with a birthday cake waiting for seating and I felt kinda bad we got seated before she did. The table was for 6, and there was a Kiosk tablet in the middle of the table. Besides taunting me with 2 dollar access games, the tablet also let us pay. Which would have been nifty if the roll of receipt paper had not been falling out of the compartment. Enjoyed the tech, hated the microtransactions. Decor: Wood walls with a low interior. Coming out of the waiting area into the seating area, there is a ramp. While I like elevation in restaurants, this was poorly done because they didn't also increase roof height. I felt tall i.e. the ceilings were very short and a bit uncomfortable to sit under. They also had cookbooks, wine bottles, and wine bottle corks arranged around. The c...