Sometimes You Need To Bastardize The Homogeneity

Since I started writing this blog two years ago, I have stopped in occasionally to visit a childhood favorite of mine, Marie's Pizza and Chicken. This Wadsworth-based restaurant established itself on the south side of town where it's most major accomplishment was to win the Akron Beacon Journal's Best Pizza Award in 1976. From that point until the late 2000's when the new location opened up just north of I-76, the focus has been on what made the restaurant such a maven for locals: great pizza and simple, but delicious Italian classics.

When walking into the new building, one familiar with the previous location could immediately recognize that the new space tripled (and that's without the extra banquet room space) the amount of seating. In addition to starting out with a completely new space for the restaurant, the owner also decided to expand the menu, presumably in an effort to compete on a more level playing field with the likes of Applebee's just down the street, which never seems to have a shortage of patrons on the weekends.

Smartly, the dishes that made Marie's such a go to spot in the first place remained on the menu. Not-so-smartly, the expanded menu sought to include dishes that were well outside of their comfort zone, such as teriyaki-flavored dishes and sandwich wraps. When the new location opened several years ago, the place would be literally mobbed for lunch and dinner and in fact, I waited about six weeks before even attempting to try and get in. Since then, I have written about them three times, two of which were positive and the last, well, not entirely glowing.

I decided to include a fourth review not because I am a glutton for punishment, but because a) they have a newly printed and bound menu and b) I think I am at the point where I can conclusively recommend Marie's for only a handful of items on the menu, sadly most of the ones that made the original menu at their first location such a success.

When I sat down today, my server handed me the now tome-like menu. While not quite as bad as say, The Cheesecake Factory, it was certainly nowhere near the brevity of their first menu:











As I looked through the menu, I was actually filled with a bit of sadness. Besides the spelling mistakes I noticed, the menu spoke of the homogeneity of today's modern dining out experience. This menu had the same look and feel of almost every national chain restaurant; instead of standing out and counting on its individuality, the new menu instead emphasized the vast blandness of conformity. So sad.

While I have more or less stuck to the tried and true menu items from my youth, today I was feeling in neither a pizza nor pasta kind of mood. Since my last sandwich selection wasn't particularly good, I decided to try one of their newer additions, the Tuscan Wrap. While the sandwich came with potato chips by default, for an additional upcharge, I could add fried-from-frozen French Fries and a side such as coleslaw, applesauce, or cottage cheese. I chose the coleslaw, which came out first:


Essentially food service coleslaw (which, gentle reader, means that the kitchen simply portions each serving from the prepared and delivered container that someone like Sysco provides), this side was about as remarkable as every other version you could get at a national chain restaurant. Which is to say, completely unremarkable.

Things perked up slightly after our table received the complimentary garlic bread sticks and warm marinara dipping sauce:


Since I've described the bread sticks and sauce in a previous entry, I won't do it again here. Sadly, this was the high point of the meal for me.

After a little bit longer, our lunch plates arrived. Here was a shot of my Tuscan Wrap with French Fries:


Here was a close-up shot of the filling in today's wrap:


The Tuscan Wrap was a sun-dried tomato basil wrap containing grilled chicken, onions, green peppers, melted cheese and dried Italian herbs, I'm guessing oregano. While the ingredients in the wrap were definitely hot, my first taste of the wrap left me wondering if they had opened up an Italian Taco Bell in the kitchen as the flavors and textures reminded me of the chicken burrito I can get for $1.39 at the fast food giant. With how uniformly cut the chicken chunks appeared inside the wrap, it didn't take a stretch of the imagination to realize that the chicken had already been cooked and chopped and simply re-warmed for service.

Fortunately, the French Fries were the saving grace of this plate of food:


While they were fried-from-frozen (as confirmed by our server), at least they were fried properly, seasoned well, and were nice and fluffy on the inside. I ended up eating less than half of my wrap and about half of my fries before throwing in the towel and calling it quits.

Having eaten Marie's pizza about a week prior to this lunch, I do have to say that the pizza still captures a special place in my heart. However, should their pizza and pasta start to decline, even just a little, I would be entirely willing to write this once adored pantheon of carb-laden goodness off as a casualty of conformity.

As today's visit to Marie's was a celebratory one (my aunt's birthday was the day prior), we returned to my grandmother's condo to finish off the lunch with a small cake from Ann's Pastry located in downtown Wadsworth:


After expressing my desire to have a small cake (it was just four of us) that had REAL buttercream frosting and not the seemingly de facto standard of vegetable shortening sweetened with sugar, my mother managed to track down exactly what she needed at Ann's. While the cake had thoughtfully come adorned with just a single red rose, my mother decided to transform the cake into the poster child for breast cancer awareness by covering every available square inch on top of the cake with pink candles.

After singing Happy Birthday with some very, ahem, interesting clapping by my aunt (whom I promised I would not post the footage I captured on my camera), I set about slicing up four servings of the cake:


The good news was that this yellow cake was both tasty and moist. The bad news was that the frosting, although a buttercream, suffered from way too much sweetness; to the point where I had to seek out a glass of water to help tame it down a bit. I haven't had the opportunity to give a range of Ann's Pastry Shop products a try yet for the blog, so I don't want to condemn the entire shop just because the frosting today was over the top in sugar content. They've been around quite a long time (more than twenty years), so they must be doing something correct. I'll have to give them a more formal review at some point in the near future.

For those interested in checking out this quaint little shop, it can be found at 121 High Street, Wadsworth, OH 44281 and can be reached at 330-335-7441.

Sometimes Homemade Just Isn't Enough

While it has been more than a year since anything about Marie's Restaurant in Wadsworth, Ohio has shown up here on the blog, that doesn't mean that it has been that long since I returned for a meal. Often times I end up getting the same thing on different visits and once I've written about a particular menu item, there really isn't a need to re-hash it again (unless it has dramatically changed). The trouble is that since Marie's isn't all that close to where I live, I only consider going when I am either a) craving their pizza or b) already in Wadsworth visiting with my grandmother. On this particular visit, instead of our semi-yearly visit to Miss Molly's Tea Room to celebrate my mother's birthday, she indicated that she'd like to go to Marie's instead. This was doubly good for my grandmother, who has certain food restrictions, because their menu does indeed offer some items she can eat without issue.

When Marie's first relocated to its present location in the northern end of Wadsworth, expecting to find an empty table at 11:30 AM on a Saturday would have been a fruitless endeavor. Fortunately, as happens with all popular restaurants, after a few months the hysteria dies down and you start to see more realistic numbers during the lunch and dinner rush. We arrived today and found a rather sparse crowd at 11:30 and by the time we left an hour later, it was busier, but certainly not packed.

Since I neglected to take a photograph of the front of Marie's restaurant on my last two write-ups, I thought I would include one now:


While the pizza has been my staple menu item for years, today I wasn't particularly feeling the love. I've had good success with their chicken Parmesan sandwich before, but wanted to try a twist today and decided to go with the homemade meatball sandwich instead. It seemed like a real no-brainer since the buns were homemade, the meatballs were homemade, and the marinara was homemade. Having already established that I like the buns and the marinara because of the chicken Parmesan sandwich, it seemed that the only unknown part of this equation were the meatballs. After having had a pretty bad meatball recently at Bellacino's Pizza and Grinders, I figured that Marie's couldn't be worse.

After placing our orders and dropping off our drinks, our server surprised us with a basket of garlic breadsticks and marinara sauce:


I had forgotten that breadsticks came complimentary with our meal. They were made from the same homemade dough that Marie's uses for their pizza. Here was a shot of my breadstick, sauced:


I've written about the breadsticks in a past entry, so I won't belabor the point of repeating myself. I'll just stick with ... these were pretty good.

Shortly after finishing the breadsticks, our lunches arrived. Here was a shot of my meatball sandwich and potato chips:


Hidden at the rear of the plate was a standard dill pickle spear. All sandwiches come with potato chips, and you can upgrade to another side for an additional fee. Obviously, I just decided to go with the standard potato chips today. Both the pickle and chips were of the grocery store variety and didn't go out of their way to impress me. At the same time, the flavor was precisely what I expected from this level of food product.

The meatball sandwich, however, was definitely worth talking about. I guess I had assumed that a meatball sandwich would be served on a roll-style bun; something with a spine that connected the two halves together. Marie's version was served on the same bun that the rest of the sandwiches utilized. For chicken Parmesan, this was fine since the fried chicken patty sat nicely between the split roll.

As you can see in this next shot, melted mozzarella cheese partially covered the ROUND meatballs:


And here was a shot of the sandwich, bisected:


Because of the roundness of the meatballs, taking a bite meant not only trying to get a mouthful of sandwich, but also preventing the filling from falling out onto the plate below. In terms of "Sandwich Science," either slice the meatballs in half so they don't roll, or put the round meatballs in a hoagie bun. That criticism aside, how did it taste? From a flavor standpoint, it was quite good. All the elements worked pretty well together. The meatball flavor was prominent and the acidity from the marinara sauce added a nice counterbalance to the fattiness of the meat. Sadly, the meatballs were a bit dry. I think that made the meatball a little bit tougher to chew than it should have been. Would I order the sandwich again? Yes, I would. Based on my other visits, I'm willing to consider the overcooked meatballs an anomaly.

Another oddity that came out on my plate hidden underneath the potato chips was this lone, strangely-shaped Jo Jo:


For those not from the northeast Ohio area, a Jo Jo is kind of like a potato wedge that may or may not be coated and then normally fried (and they can be baked, too). Somehow this misshapen spud managed to sneak its way onto my plate. Either none of us were in the mood for a potato or its uneven size made us all too scared to touch it as it sat lonely on my side plate. I have had Jo Jo's at Marie's before and they were at least on par with the rest of the Jo Jo universe.

While I still maintain that Marie's menu was unnecessarily enlarged to appeal to a wider audience, at least the Italian staples that made them a Wadsworth institution have remained solid and still tasty. While I have heard others state that they think Marie's has declined over the years, the food and service has always remained pretty consistent during my visits. While their new location doesn't quite have the charm of the original, the food still manages to take me back to my high school days when I'd stop in for some Italian American treats.

And Sometimes You Can (Go Home)

I've written about Marie's Restaurant located in Wadsworth, OH before and after my sort of disastrous meal at the Chicken Manor Restaurant in my last post, I decided that I needed an Italian food intervention to set things straight.

While my normal order is a medium pepperoni pizza, this time I decided to try something on the menu that I hadn't ordered before, the lasagna. One of Marie's strengths (besides their pizzas) has always been their marinara sauce and varieties of pastas. Add on to that fact that Marie's makes their lasagna daily from scratch and you can see what motivated me to order it.

First, my garden salad with side of French dressing:


Pretty standard stuff, and flavor profiles were in line with what I was expecting. The one thing I did notice were the cheese and croutons -- in a good way. The cheese was freshly grated and didn't overwhelm the salad and the croutons, which I have no doubt in my mind were not homemade, were actually decent. Flavorful without being overly salty and processed.

Next up is the lasagna. As with most places, you'll notice two things about the lasagna. The portion is huge, and it's largely invisible underneath a mountain of sauce:


This was a nicely constructed lasagna. However, the lasagna itself was not the star ... the *sauce* was the star. This was a marinara sauce that comes across as a meat sauce. The "meatiness" in the dish was amazing. The depth of tomato flavor that they developed when making the sauce just screams "umami". It's the same sauce that is used on their pizzas and I am beginning to realize why their pizzas are also SO good. I only ate about half of the lasagna and took the rest home for a second meal.

Finally, a shot of some proper garlic breadsticks and more of that delicious marinara sauce, this time used as a dipping sauce:


The garlic breadsicks were tasty and better than average, but still not a standout. In other words, the breadsticks alone are not enough to draw me into Marie's. Then again, being paired with more of that stellar marinara sauce is enough to elevate even the most mediocre of dishes.

Once again I have to heartily recommend Marie's for the aficionado of anything having to do with "red sauce" Italian places. It's nice to know that I can go home (literally) and find an excellent plate of pasta.