More Lunch Adventures At Continental Cuisine

As adventurous as I am about my dining choices, sometimes I just get into a routine. Not necessarily over the seemingly limitless choices of restaurants, but when I find a great dish, I mean a REALLY great dish on a menu, a visit to the restaurant isn't so much about exploring other items which could also be equally as tasty, but rather enjoying the same thing over and over again. It's kind of like when I crave a specific type of food, the associated restaurant immediately pops into my head as well. Thus it is with Continental Cuisine in the Fairlawn area located directly across from Summit Mall. While their menu has a variety of Mediterranean-inspired dishes, I always end up ordering the chicken shwarma with a side of French Fries. Oddly enough, today I met up with a friend who also goes to the restaurant for exactly one thing, the gyro with the same side of fries.

So, in the spirit of change, even though both of us were still considering ordering our old stand-bys when we arrived, in an interesting twist of fate, by the time we got around to placing our order, both of us decided on giving their pizzas a try. Made from a homemade pizza dough, they were available in both small (10") and large (14") sizes and could be made from standard pizza toppings or many of the other Mediterranean ingredients available on the menu.

My friend decided to order the small Meat Lover's pizza, substituting the gyro meat for the ham:


And while I didn't try a slice of his, I thoroughly enjoyed my version, the small Mediterranean:


Topped with black olives, eggplant, tomatoes, and onions, each bite had a little bit of salty and sweet flavor to it. While the tomato sauce was fairly basic and didn't really stand out, the crust was very tasty and quite well done.

Here was a close-up shot of a single slice:


And here was a closer shot of the crust:


The crust had that nice balance of crunch and chew. I don't think Continental Cuisine aged their pizza dough, but I could definitely tell from the delicious flavor that it was definitely made in-house. With the addition of some dried red pepper flakes, I pretty much devoured my pizza (as did my friend). I had heard good things about Continental's pizza from other people and now I can confirm that they are all true. Was this crust in the Pantheon of all-time greats for me? No, there are definitely better out there. But this was far better than any chain pizza and I'd have no qualms recommending them to pizza aficionados out there.

About a week and half after my last visit, I decided to stop back in for another lunch, this time flying solo. While I was tempted to fall back into old habits, I decided to take a chance and try something else from the menu. Feeling in a red sauce kind of mood, the only option which would appease this lust (besides the pizza, which I already had) was the Lasagna. The menu indicated that all of the entrees came with either a house salad or their fantastic French Fries. I opted for the house salad because a) I've already talked about the French Fries and b) French Fries with Lasagna? Really? Um, no.

A few minutes later, my server returned with a quite large salad:

I had asked him if the restaurant had a house dressing and sure enough, they did. This rather simple lettuce and chopped tomato salad had been dressed with a lemon, garlic, and olive oil vinaigrette. The garlic wasn't particularly present visibly in the vinaigrette, but after a mouthful of greens, I could definitely taste it. While I would consider the salad a bit too overdressed, I found that the dressing was well seasoned and slightly acidic, a perfect dipping sauce for the pita bread that had arrived with the salad:

While the salad wasn't particularly inspirational with it's fair share of lettuce stems and very out-of-season tomato chunks, the accompanying pita bread was fresh and soaked up the extra vinaigrette nicely. I had to remind myself that I still had the lasagna coming, so I didn't want to fill up on bread. While most items I've ever ordered at Continental Cuisine have come out of the kitchen with surprising speed, my server informed me that the lasagna takes a bit longer to come to the right temperature. I'd say I waited maybe five minutes longer than normal, so it wasn't a huge problem.

When my lasagna did arrive, I heard it before I saw it:

Apparently having come straight from the oven and plated on a ceramic dish, as my server set it in front of me he admonished me to not touch the deep walled dish in which the lasagna rested. Visually noting the voracity of the still bubbling cheese and sauce, I took him at his word. After dropping off my dish, he asked if I wanted any of the extras; I opted for dried oregano and red pepper flakes:

Of course, before I added anything to the dish, I wanted to taste it on its own first. First impressions? If you like lots of gooey melted cheese and lasagna absolutely swimming in sauce, then Continental Cuisine's version will be right up your alley. While the menu had implied that the lasagna was made with meat sauce, they were only half-telling the truth. There was indeed meat in the lasagna, but the sauce was instead a marinara. I tried the marinara by itself and found it on the sweeter side of the scale. For me it was borderline almost too sweet, but there was enough acidity from the tomatoes to keep it from going too far. The cheese was of your standard shredded mozzarella variety and was either melted into a molten Napalm or crusted with a nice golden brown color on top of the actual piece of lasagna.

When I finally managed to get to the lasagna, I was neither wowed nor disappointed. Sadly, the layers of pasta and meat got lost amongst all of the red sauce in the dish. I did end up adding a little bit of oregano and red pepper flakes, but that wasn't so much to correct the seasoning as it was to just make the flavors a little more interesting. While I've been a big proponent of the other dishes I've had in the past at Continental Cuisine, this one left me feeling just a little flat.

In addition to the pita bread brought out during my salad course, the lasagna also came with a small plate of cheesy garlic bread:

In addition to the single slice of toasted bread, there was even MORE shredded cheese sitting next to it, just in case I hadn't gotten my cheese fix from the lasagna. The bread was toasted nicely with a prominent but not overwhelming garlic flavor. I suppose for those who think that there can never be too much cheese on a dish, this would suit them well, but for me, I would have liked it better sans cheese.

All criticisms aside, I did end up eating the entire dish of pasta as well as my garlic bread, if that says anything. While I don't think I will be ordering the lasagna again (or the house salad unless the tomatoes are actually in season), I have had so many other great meals at Continental Cuisine, that I know I will be returning time and again for either the pizza or their Mediterranean wraps and the still amazing French Fries. I heartily suggest you check them out if you haven't already.

When A Grinder Isn't Really A Grinder

Even before I write this blog post, I have a funny feeling I am about to be banned from yet another restaurant. As the song goes, "Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be."

I came across a reference to Bellacino's Pizza and Grinders when I was looking at a map of Stow area restaurants. After checking out their website (which included their menu), I was intrigued enough to add them to my list of places to visit. Based on the history blurb on their website, they had slowly grown from a small time mom and pop place to the full-sized eatery that was located at 3657 Fishcreek Road, Stow, OH 44224. They can be reached at 330-678-3000. The parking lot around the store was ample and should be able to handle a large number of customers.

Here was a shot of the front of the store:


While the patio was not only open and occupied tonight, it was still a bit too chilly for my taste so I opted to sit inside. During lunch service, Bellacino's was a serve yourself kind of place. But during dinner, the restaurant transforms into a full-service restaurant, replete with hostess. After seating me by a window table in the bar area, I began to peruse and photograph the menu:







I requested a glass of water and my server brought me this:


Normally I wouldn't include a glass of water in my write-up, but in this case I made an exception. Although the water had no odor, it definitely had a funky flavor. I'm not normally one to pick up on off flavors or odors in my water, but time after time of tasting this, I couldn't get over the pond-esque taste of it. It reminded me of the smell when you are walking through the woods and discover a still pond with algae growing in it. Now that very well may be the city of Stow's problem with its water, but I'm here to say Bellacino's needs to filter it.

I wasn't sure what I was going to order for dinner until I figured out a way to try both the grinder and a pizza. It seems that Monday night's special was a medium 12" specialty pizza for only $8.99. Coupled with the fact that I could get a 4.5" grinder sandwich (considered a 1/4 sandwich) for right around $4, I figured that I'd order both and just take whatever I didn't finish home for later consumption. For my grinder, I did ask my server if there was a house specialty and she pointed to the one with Italian cold cuts. Not really being in a cold cuts kind of mood, I asked her about the meatball grinder. She confessed that the meatballs weren't homemade, but the sliced meatball sandwich was a popular seller. For my pizza, I decided to go with the "Super," a combination of pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers and onions.

After a bit of a wait, my dinner finally arrived. First up, my meatball grinder:


It wasn't until I went to fold the sandwich over that I realized that the sandwich was actually on two different pieces of bread. And, in fact, it became apparent to me quite quickly after my server told me that a whole grinder was 18" long that what Bellacino's was offering was not a grinder, but a focaccia sandwich. Putting two and two together, I began to formulate a best guess as to what was going on. The dough being used for the "grinders" was the same homemade dough being used for the pizzas. To make this bread, I surmise that they spread the dough out onto full sheet pans, measuring 18" x 26" and bake it off earlier in the day. When a grinder is ordered, these sheets of dough (essentially focaccia at this point) are cut to size, toppings placed on top, and the whole thing is run under a broiler or placed in an oven to heat up.

As any sandwich aficionado knows, a proper sandwich is as much about the bread as it is about the toppings. And whether you call it a grinder, sub, hoagie, po' boy, or zeppelin, this sandwich qualified as none of those. This wasn't a mild stretching or interpretation of the classic definition; this was a bastardization of it. As a focaccia sandwich, it still wasn't great, but at least it was the proper category.

So, bread issues aside, how was the meatball filling? A very sad disappointment, too. Here was a close-up of the meatball slices:


The only thing meatball-ish about these oddly shaved meat patties were their round shape. The flavor had a metallic taste to it, a sign of garlic / onion / seasoning salt and the texture was oddly smooth and spongy, like one would expect from a forcemeat such as pate. It was clear that the meatballs were kept separate from the tomato sauce and only put together when the sandwich was assembled because there were plenty of meatball slices that had no sauce on them at all. To make matters worse, the sandwich came out barely lukewarm and by the time I got about three bites in, it was completely cold. My plan was to eat the entire grinder and take most of my pizza home. Not tonight. I ate less then 1/3 of my grinder and just left the rest on the plate. When I only asked for a box for the remainder of my pizza at the end of my meal, I hoped that my server would've picked up on the fact that most of my sandwich was left and I wasn't taking it with me as a sign that maybe something was wrong. She didn't say a word. I decided to save my words for now.

Fortunately, the "Super" pizza fared better than the grinder:


This was brought to the table nice and hot. In fact, it was only after finishing up with my sandwich that I even turned my attention to the pizza and it was still hot. Here was a shot of a single slice:


When I had asked my server about the provenance of the dough and the pizza sauce, she confirmed that both were homemade. At Bellacino's, toppings go on before the cheese and this made for a bit of a mess when taking a bite as I got long ropes of Mozzarella cheese that pulled off in large, hot mouth-burning strands. The sauce was nice, if a little uninspired. The dough, while nicely browned on the outer crust, was completely blond and underbaked on the bottom. Which was really odd, because the slogan on the side of the take-out pizza box indicated it should be otherwise:


I couldn't agree more: Crust IS the key. I ended up taking home half of my pizza and re-heating it later on for a snack. While the pizza wasn't bad, it also didn't stand out either.

Having tried the two signature items on the menu (the name of the restaurant is Bellacino's Pizza and Grinders after all), in my mind the "grinder" turned out to be a miserable failure and the pizza was just so-so. Coupled with the fact that the water had an off taste and the meatballs were some of the worst I have ever tasted, I think it's pretty safe to say that I don't think I'll be stopping by again for another meal anytime soon.