A Nice Surprise At Casa D'Angelo

After taking me up on my rather disastrous lunch suggestion of MJ Mugsy's in Upper Sandusky, Ohio, I was worried that our Fort Wayne-bound group might be a little hesitant before taking another suggestion from me. In doing my research prior to the trip, I had narrowed down the number of interesting looking Fort Wayne eateries to about half a dozen. But, due to time constraints, I knew that I would have to narrow it down even further.

Originally listed on the first cut of restaurants, Casa D'Angelo fit a lot of the criteria I was using. It was a local chain, lots of local folks were recommending it on the Internet, and there were six locations from which to choose. Ultimately what made me cut it from the final list was their menu. Fortunately, this time I was not relying on a third party website to dig deeper into the offerings, I could see it with my own two eyes on their website. Unfortunately, as I scrutinized the menu, I began to see the tell-tale signs of what I like to call the "Cheesecake Factory Effect." In a nutshell, the CFE is the tendency for the food quality to decline as the number of dishes available increases. I personally felt it would be better to stick with a more manageable list of dishes that could be executed flawlessly rather than a huge menu that tried to appeal to everyone but was mediocre.

At the last minute, however, my mother asked if I could make a dinner recommendation for Friday night. Knowing that nearly everyone loves Italian food and figuring that it couldn't be any worse than a national chain (or my lunch suggestion), I thought that this might now fit the bill perfectly. I was worried because we were a group of eight and Casa D'Angelo has a no reservations policy on Friday and Saturday nights. Fortunately, we arrived right at 5:30 PM and had absolutely no problem getting a table.

The location we decided to eat at was situated at 3402 Fairfield Avenue, Fort Wayne, IN 46807 and can be reached directly at 260-745-7200. Being only a mere two miles from our hotel, it took us all of ten minutes to get there. From the street, you saw the lit sign attached to a light pole:


A sizable parking lot and the restaurant's entrance were in the rear of the building:


Once inside, we were escorted through a number of hallways to our table at the rear of the restaurant. Instead of the dining room being one large room, there were many smaller rooms off the main hallway. Several members of our dining party wondered if this had been an old house that had been converted into a restaurant. I'm not quite sure. I know a number of old-school Italian places in Akron that had several adjoining rooms to the main one, just like Casa D'Angelo.

After we were all seated, menus were distributed:


I won't go into picture after picture of the menu since I've already posted a link to the entire contents on their website. After taking our drink orders, our server brought us pre-sliced Italian loaves with ramekins of butter:


Here was a shot of my portion:


This was a nice slice of bread. Nothing pretentious, nothing artisan. Just a nice warm slice of bread with perfectly softened butter. I'm not sure if they set out some of the butter to soften for the beginning of dinner service because after our server brought us out more bread and butter half-way through the meal, the butter in that ramekin was rock hard and ice cold.

I decided to start out with a cup of their Zuppa di Lenticchie (or Lentil Soup):


This had a very hearty, earthy flavor to it. What surprised me was that there weren't just lentils in it:


The broccoli floret in the above photo had completely given its flavor over to the soup and in return had absorbed the hearty stock and lentil flavors right back in. It was interesting how it definitely tasted like lentil soup, but there were clearly other ingredients in there as well that blended in so nicely. I was impressed enough (and hungry enough) to finish the entire cup. Several others at our table got a simple tossed salad with the only dressing available, the house dressing. I didn't have a chance to taste it, but those who had salads seemed to enjoy it.

As I was looking through the vast menu, my eye came upon a dish that suddenly tickled my fancy, Risotto con Pollo e Funghi (or Risotto with Chicken and Mushrooms). Knowing that risotto can be a tricky dish to get right and also knowing the tricks that professional kitchens use to prepare risotto so that it can be served a la minute (at the last minute), I figured this would be a good test. I was impressed that our food (for an eight top) came out all together and relatively quickly.

Here was a shot of my risotto:


The chicken was sort of buried in the rice, but the mushrooms were certainly visible on the top:


I have to say that this was actually a decent risotto. The rice was cooked but still had just a bit of toothiness to it, the chicken was very moist and tender, and the mushrooms, although not quite as exotic as the menu would lead you to believe, added a nice earthiness to the dish as well. It was creamy enough to "glop" off the spoon and back onto the plate, but not so creamy that it resembled a savory rice pudding dish. I also definitely picked up on the chicken stock flavor in which the rice had been cooked. The only thing really lacking was a real explosion of any single flavor. I would've loved had the mushroom flavor been more intense. That being said, for a chain restaurant, this wasn't a bad version. Had I been served this at a high end Italian restaurant and been charged twice as much, I would expect a lot more. For $9.79, I think it fit the bill.

Our server offered us the obligatory tiramisu for dessert, but unfortunately, the conference for which we had all driven the three hours to Fort Wayne was scheduled to start in about ten minutes. We quickly paid for our individual checks (which I have to give props to our server who did a marvelous job taking care of us, especially under our time constraint), hopped back in the cars and were back at the hotel/convention center just in time for the opening session.

While I was skeptical at first and even went so far as to cross Casa D'Angelo off my own personal list of places to visit in Fort Wayne, they did a pretty good job. I certainly found it to be better than a certain national Italian restaurant brand, but my viewpoint wasn't shared by all. And I'm totally fine with that. In the end, I'm glad I had a chance to try the food. I suggest if you live in Fort Wayne or are passing through and are looking a decent Italian meal, Casa D'Angelo might just be right up your alley.

Making The Grade At Alexandris Restaurant

At a recent breakfast with one of my faithful readers and her husband, the suggestion was made that I ought to check out another one of Wadsworth's old stalwarts, Alexandris Restaurant right on the downtown square. I had eaten there many, many years ago when I was still in high school, but for some reason, it had fallen off of the radar until the moment when my breakfast companions suggested it.

The restaurant is located at 146 Main Street, Wadsworth, OH, 44281 and can be reached at 330-336-0203. I searched for a website and couldn't find an official one, although the restaurant is mentioned on a number of other related website (Urbanspoon, etc.).

I approached the front of the restaurant at around 1 P.M. As I prepared to take the photo of the front of the restaurant,


a woman carrying a carry-out container walked out of Alexandris and out of frame. At that moment I snapped the photo only to discover that she had only been delivering an order to the store next door. As I lowered my camera, she approached me.

"What are you doing?"
"I'm taking a picture."
"Why?" (Her voice began to escalate.)
"Because I wanted to."
"Is there something wrong?"

I knew I couldn't tell her the real reason why I was here as that could potentially compromise the anonymity of my visit and the quality of the food I would receive. I decided to play it cool and try and diffuse the situation.

"No, nothing is wrong. I just wanted a picture, that's all."

Seemingly placated by my words, I followed her in through the front door and promptly asked for a table for one person. She seated me at a table near the back of the restaurant and went back about her business, oblivious to the fact that I continued to discreetly take additional photos. The seating arrangements at Alexandris can be broken up into tables, booths, and the ever popular lunch counter. Here was a shot of the lunch counter:


To the left of the lunch counter is a small salad bar containing the ingredients for a green, leafy salad with all of the trimmings or a variety of homemade non-green salads such as pasta salad, macaroni salad, potato salad, and cole slaw.

I normally try and photograph the entire menu, especially for a restaurant that doesn't already publish theirs on a website, but unfortunately, there were FOUR menus to choose from today and I decided that it would be just too much. Here were some of the menu choices I had from which to choose.

The regular Breakfast Specials:


The regular Lunch Specials:


And the regular lunch and dinner menu:



I failed to take photos of the regular breakfast menu and the daily specials which were written on a dry erase board by the entrance to the restaurant. Clearly there is a lot of choice at Alexandris Restaurant.

Today I was in the mood for a sandwich and despite the fact that my server suggested I try the Triple Decker, when I saw that they offered a Patty Melt, I was immediately drawn towards that choice instead. With most of the sandwiches offered on the menu, it was only a $0.50 surcharge to add a bowl of soup, too. My server assured me that both soups today, Lentil soup and Creamy Chicken Noodle soup, were made from scratch in the kitchen. My choice of Lentil soup was greeted with approval as my server noted that "too few people order that, but it is really very good."

A few minutes later, my soup arrived:


The soup was actually very good and the lentils were nice and soft. In addition to the lentils, ham, carrots, celery, onion, and a good bit of black pepper made their way into this bowl. While I would order this soup again just the way it was, as I continued to eat it, I began to notice that it was missing something. The first flavor that popped into my head was rosemary. The second was thyme. I don't know that it needed both, but it definitely needed something herbaceous. A second tier of flavor, if you will.

After finishing my bowl of soup (which is a great deal for $0.50 extra), my sandwich and onion rings arrived:


Served with grilled rye bread, two kinds of American cheese (white and yellow) and grilled onions, the Patty Melt was slightly better than average. The bread and the cheese were fine, but unfortunately, the grilled onions still had a bit too much crunch to them and the 1/2 pound burger, which I had asked to be cooked medium, came out something more like this:


While the burger wasn't dry, it certainly wasn't medium either. Closer to a shade over medium well. I'm guessing that the grilled onions were started at the same time as the burger and only after the onions cooked long enough were they both removed at the same time.

My side of onion rings didn't fare much better:


The moment I tried to bite into these, the onion on the inside immediately released from the outer coating and I got a mouthful of cooked onion sans coating. I suspected that these were fried from frozen and when I asked my server about it, she freely admitted it. "Gee, we don't have time to do everything from scratch, you know?" This seemed a little strange given that they made so many of their other items from scratch and yet failed to see why doing fresh onion rings would make that much of a difference.

I finished up the remainder of my lunch and took my check up to the front of the restaurant where the woman who had first confronted me outside was standing behind the cash register.

"How was everything?" she quipped.
"Oh, just fine," I quietly answered.

Apparently she had been fortuitous enough to catch me snapping a photograph of the outside of her restaurant, but hadn't managed to catch me in the act of taking a dozen more once I sat down. I thought about telling her that I would be writing about her restaurant on my food blog (since I had already paid the check and comps weren't possible at that point), but then thought better of it. Of the many places I have reviewed so far, few have gotten that privilege and those that did had normally caught me in the act of taking pictures and asked enough specific questions about what I was doing that I had to come clean.

I'm torn about Alexandris Restaurant. The Patty Melt platter was $5.95. The additional bowl of soup was only $0.50 more. That makes for a check that is easy on the wallet. However, an excellent bowl of soup mixed with an overcooked burger and mediocre onion rings makes me think that while there was nice potential for a good meal, they definitely have room for improvement. While Alexandris Restaurant isn't someplace I would recommend to people who are looking for a destination dining type of spot, if you happen to be in Wadsworth, it's worth checking out.