Amerigo

I met some friends for dinner at Amerigo tonight. I perhaps am not the best reviewer of food right now, as I am restricted to a somewhat limited selection of foods. But, I am good at determining a restaurant's worth by reading its menu. Amerigo has a pretty big menu considering it is more of an upscale joint. Most things looked really, really good. They divide the menu into "New World" and "Old World" selections, and some of the Old World selections were very similar to dishes I used to eat when I lived in Venice. What I like, too, is that the wine list is divided into New World and Old World choices. I had to pass, but there were a lot of good bottles on that list (mostly bottles, the by the glass selection was a little skim).

Another plus is that you can opt for whole wheat penne in any of the pasta dishes. I haven't had pasta in over a month, but I can eat whole wheat pasta! So I did. I got the Goat Cheese Pasta, which was sundried tomatoes, diced tomatoes, scallions, goat cheese, gaaaaarlic and the whole wheat penne I chose. It was really good, but had waaaaay too much garlic for me. I suppose you could ask them to go light on that.

My lady friend had the crab tortellini, and her beau had the lobster ravioli. The tortellini looked heavenly and sinful and my pals said it was deeeelicious. The lobster ravioli looked good but my pal said the portion size was way to small. It definitely looked small, which was a bummer because the other two dishes were quite large, aka American sized and certainly not Italian sized. The pasta dishes were like 13-15 bucks, which I generally think is a little high for a pasta. I would exempt the lobster one, but it was so small.

The filets read good, and so did the pork dishes. There are also pizzas. Yum. The one thing about a lot of Italian restaurants in this area is that they take on an American version of Italian, and I would say that besides some of the Old World selections, Amerigo does as well. Which is probably what they are going for. So while it was very good, this wasn't on a whole authentic Italian food. What I am saying, however, haters, is that's not a bad thing necessarily. I'm just pointing it out.

Had I been willing to spend a little more dough (I save most of my dinner allowance for the weekend), I probably would have chosen the Mahi Mahi special. I may be one of the only fish lovers I know who truly dislikes salmon. Unfortunately, most restaurants offer salmon as their fallback fish. Amerigo included.

I think this would be a fun place to go for a long dinner and drinks with friends. Considering my limitations, I still had a nice time and a nice meal. This would probably be an entirely different review, however, had I been able to drink and eat freely.

8 out of 10 wigs. I don't know how to add those wigs in here.
[update: here you go, em]


xoxo