As promised, this is the detailed description of my delectable dinner Friday night at Ristorante Al Dente.
Before dinner, which I came to pretty much straight from work, I had a delightfully refreshing vokda and 7-Up, since I got there a little bit earlier than everyone else.
This is the pizza bread with basil aioli that they serve as their free bread. It's light and delicious, with just a hint of cheese on top, and of course the aioli is super creamy and delicious and flavorful and just plain dreamy. We had two plates. One day, I want to go there and just sit and eat like five free plates pizza bread and pretend I got stood up and then leave. LOL
I was torn between what to order for an appetizer. I was thinking of prosciutto wrapped around melon, or veal carpaccio, or the sampler with all kinds of delicious antipasto, or even the cream of mushroom soup. So I ended up ordering an entree pizza that could be shared. This perfectly thin (crispy crust that also was chewy once you got past that perfect crunch) delight had Italian bacon, porcini mushrooms, onions and, in generous portions, parmesan riggiano.
OH. MY. FUCKING. GOD.This is what pizza is supposed to be like. None of that greasy Pizza Hut/Domino's crap. This is gourmet pizza. This is God's gift to the taste buds. This makes California Pizza Kitchen seem like DiGiorno's.
The entree I had -- which I forgot to take a picture of because as soon as it came and the waiter grated some parmesan on top of I dug right into it -- was rigatoni (perfectly al dente) with a delicious red sauce and ... lobster.
Oh yeah, baby!
And then, of course, there was dessert!
These are the profiteroles with a chocolate sauce enhanced by just the right amount of high-end booze. I poured some into my coffee and ... *drool*
Unfortunately, the profiteroles pretty much sucked ass. They were dry and spongy and the cream filling was more than bleah.
Should have went with the tiramisu, which one of my friends had, or the chocolate souffle.
Oh well ... the rest of the meal made up for that ... plus I stole some tiramisu. Heh.
SAN BENITO, Texas -- Freddy Fender, the "Bebop Kid" of the Texas-Mexico border who later turned his twangy tenor into the smash country ballad "Before the Next Teardrop Falls," died Saturday. He was 69.
