From Italy with love

I'd like to say that I haven't written in 3 weeks because I've been on a wonderful trip to Italy or somewhere else full of culinary excitement. However, my excuse is nothing short of lame. While I've been turning to delicious food to get me through these weeks, I haven't had the energy or time to keep up. The past few weeks have been tough but I thought I'd spend a few moments catching up on the floggables from the past few weeks.

Raphael and Saba's visit recently landed us a dinner date at Cafe Cozzolino in our neighborhood. Raphael's grandmother lived around the corner from there and all he could talk about was the calamari. This Italian restaurant could be summed up as a "protein at 6 o'clock" kind of restaurant. Each main dish, if looked at as a clock, had your protein at 6 o'clock, in my case salmon, mashed potatoes at 2 o'clock and a steamed, unexciting green vegetable at 10 o'clock. While the cookie cutter presentation was a little disheartening, the food was not bad though I'd let some time go by before returning.

Knowing that other neighborhood restaurants could deliver such better food, we were off to Liberty Cafe some days later for some comfort food. It was Thursday night, just the two of us, had some wine and got caught up on the week's events. We had a wonderful mache, fennel and persimmon salad and Nino had the chicken pot pie while I had hake (a white fish compared to monkfish) with fresh chanterelle mushrooms. Wine, comfort food and some quality time together will most always help when I've had a bad day.