My list of go-to Italian places in ATL is very short, even though I love the genre. It’s comfort food, and I love the stark contrast of simple ingredients prepared with an intense attention to detail that is presented in a quality Italian meal. Lately I’ve been finding this at La Pietra Cucina, where a simple fresh made tagliatelle with mushrooms in butter sauce sounds so uncomplicated, but is so memorable.

I like Sotto Sotto, especially for their risottos, but I haven’t been there in years. It’s just one of those restaurants that isn’t very close to my home, so I often forget about it when tossing around dining ideas. La Tavola, a Fifth Group restaurant, is another worthy Italian destination of which I’m guilty of doing the same thing. I’ve only been there two or three times over the past five years, but I have always had good experiences, at what I think are fair prices.

For an even better deal than usual, La Tavola has a Monday evening special called “Molto Monday’s”, where you are able to choose from five pasta dishes and pay only $10 for them. Based on the regular pasta dish prices, it appears to be a savings of $4-$6 per entree.

Of course, the bill goes up if you add appetizers, but I can’t resist simple classics like a well made Caesar salad. I also ordered the burrata with tomato conserva pictured above. The burrata doesn’t stack up to what the cheese pusherman can get you, but the crostini and tomato were the perfect accompaniment and I did enjoy this.

I’ve been craving carbonara frequently lately, so that’s what I ordered off the $10 pasta menu. It was a huge pile of pasta, served very hot with lots of cheese, pepper, guincale, and of course, the raw egg. My waitress tried to judge my reaction when the dish arrived and sheepishly asked, “you know you mix in the egg, right”? She wasn’t being condescending, I just think she was unsure why I was just looking at it (I was waiting for her to leave so I could be a huge dork and take a picture) and she wanted to help out. It was a funny moment.

Katie got a rigatoni dish, served with mozzarella and spinach. It was somewhat of a play on the classic orecchiette with broccoli rabe. That’s something the menu at La Tavola tends to do – the dishes have regional/classic roots, but they allow the menu to change constantly and they tweak things a bit, resulting in something new and enticing.

We had a great time, I didn’t spend too much, and I was waddling out of there after almost eating the entire plate of pasta. La Tavola definitely needs to be more of a part of my regular rotation.

A Recent Visit to La Tavola by RowdyFood

The Neapolitan (or tongue twisting Neo-Neapolitan) is my true pizza love, but something about the buttery, flaky crust, stuffed full of cheese and toppings, quite literally a “pie”, was calling my name.

I Googled a recipe for Gino’s East (a pizzeria in Chicago I’ve heard of, not sure where) and of course found a website and video detailing how to replicate it. Later I found another version, with a great picture. I followed the recipe for the most part, with a few variations due to lack of ingredients and overall forgetfulness.

I mixed the dough as described, though I didn’t have yellow food coloring. I also forgot the cornmeal. My dough was probably too sticky – it should almost be wet, but not sticky, due to the high amount of cornmeal and oil. I let it rise in my oven from about 8AM until that evening when I cooked the pizza.

The dough will quickly rise and the texture will get very puffy. I punched it down once around lunch time, and let it rise again.

My quick, standby pizza sauce is very easy. It’s an uncooked tomato sauce, which will work just fine on normal pizzas, especially if cooking with high heat. With a Chicago pizza, which will cook for a long time, I think the raw sauce works even better.

It’s simply a can of pureed/crushed Roma tomatoes (you can crush whole tomatoes if you want), with garlic powder, onion powder, oregano, red pepper, and sometimes I use a microplane to add just a tablespoon of good parmesan cheese. Don’t store your sauce in the fridge, or if making it earlier, take it out about an hour before cooking to let it come up to room temperature.

For the toppings, I purchased some Tuscan sausage from Star Provisions. I sliced them in an obvious phallic nature, then cooked them a few minutes each side.

I used Sargento cheese for this pizza. I think you’re going to get better results with mozzarella like this, versus fresh mozzarella in water. The high moisture content of real deal mozzarella will cause the cheese to break down, and the pizza will be too wet for the slices to hold together.

I also purchased pepperoni from Star Provisions. It was just a few bucks for these 10 slices, so worth it.

When I was ready to cook, I greased my cast iron skillet heavily with butter. I rolled out my dough, did my best to throw it evenly into the pan, then trimmed the sides. Start the layering process with the cheese. I did an even layer of Sargento, then used some shredded mozzarella to ensure an even cheese layer.

After the cheese I added the meat, then a healthy dose of sauce. The pizza cooked on the lower rack for roughly 40 minutes. I started at 350 as instructed, but it didn’t seem to be cooking fast enough so I bumped it up to 400. I also broiled it for a minute before taking it out and letting it rest for a solid fifteen to twenty minutes.

You can see the sides pulled away, making it very easy to cut.

The pizza was very gloppy, even after 20 minutes rest.

A few notes on this pizza:

• I could have used more oil in the dough, more cornmeal, and I could have added more oil to the pan. Oil is your friend when it comes to this type of crust.
• I probably could have used just a bit less sauce, but the cooked sauce was delicious
• It was agreed that the high quality pepperoni and sausage was the tipping point for this pizza – the quality was apparent and everyone loved it
• Cooking at 350 is probably too low, next time I’ll try a bit higher the whole time
• Man this was delicious, everything I had hoped it would be, a true pizza gut bomb

So of course, after that pizza, we ate some Ad Hoc Fried Chicken. Awesome. The poulet rouge chickens are about $8-10 each at Whole Foods, and they are so worth it. Chickens aren’t supposed to be fifteen pounds. And as Keller mentions, a smaller chicken is better for fried chicken due to the better meat to crust ratio.

This scenario played itself out recently, and the #1 place I head to for a fantastic and guilt-free meal is Dynamic Dish, but I was wondering where else I could go in town to sample a bevy of fresh vegetable and fruit driven cuisine. Somewhat surprisingly, Rathbun’s popped into my head. I’ve subscribed to their blog feed in the last few weeks, so I’ve been seeing their specials, and that’s surely why I thought to head up there, but the expression “guilt-free” and Rathbun’s have likely never been uttered in the same sentence. After a quick perusal of the menu online, I decided it was worth a shot and we headed up there for dinner.

There was no wait for a table for two inside, though their loud and dark dining area was almost full at 8PM on a Wednesday evening. While we browsed the menu I ordered a 375ml bottle of Duval-Leroy Rose Champagne. I’m learning that ordering a half bottle often has many benefits – the price is obviously lower, which means I can afford some better wines, I am more likely to savor the wine instead of slugging it down, and I’m less likely to stumble out of the restaurant at the end of the night. Plus, who doesn’t like bubbly at the start of a meal?

Rathbun’s has an extensive list of small plates, large plates, and the “second mortgage” section, where Rathbun’s proudly flaunts their most expensive dishes, an approach I find humorous, but I think it also has an in-your-face effectiveness to it. Though, we were there to eat healthy and ordered six dishes from the small plate, raw plate, and soup menu. I don’t know that we could call our order guilt-free, especially when we started with champagne, but I was successful in avoiding the broiled lamb loin special and the 20oz bone-in ribeye. It’s the small victories…

We started with the two soups, the green pea spring onion bisque, and the gazpacho, which was the soup special of the day. While both these soups were of obvious quality, and delicious upon first bite, with these two dishes a trend began that would continue with almost every dish we consumed. These soups were salty. Extremely salty. So much so I was actually confused. The gazpacho was otherwise wonderful, and amazingly fresh tasting – why would ripe, vibrant tomatoes need this amount of seasoning?

The pea soup had an incredible velvet texture, rich flavor, but the amount of seasoning was even worse than the gazpacho. With every bite I was rushing to sip my water to rinse my puckered mouth.

My confusion was laid to rest, if not for a while, when the remainder of our meal arrived. The remaining five dishes were all delicious looking, with great plating and appealing color contrast, they just looked like they were going to taste good.

The tuna with citrus and thinly sliced serranos was my favorite dish of the meal, and perhaps not coincidentally, it was also the dish with the least amount of salt that had been added when the dish was finalized. The tuna crudo, thin sliced zucchini, caprese salad, and peaches, had been either moderately or heavily seasoned at final plating with large crystals of salt.

The tomatoes in the caprese were slightly firmer than I expected in season, and the house made mozzarella wasn’t what I had hoped for texturally, but again, this dish would have been just fine to me if I hadn’t been crunching on salt with every bite of the cheese.

The peaches in blackberry balsamico would have been the best dish on the table, had it not been for the few slices of ripe peach that had its flavor suppressed by the salt. At times during the meal, my mouth tasted as if I’d been drinking margaritas from a salt-rimmed glass. It was really strange.

The charred corn side dish in gouda was even a bit too salty for me, though I will say that corn was crunchy and sweet, and I loved the char flavor and I would order this side dish again in a heartbeat.

Confused and full, I was mentally ready to finish our meal, but the peanut butter and banana dessert was my siren song. At under $4 each, the desserts are well priced for ordering more than one, so we also ordered the tiramisu mousse special.

I’m glad we did stay, because the peanut butter and banana cream pie was fantastic. I’m not even a huge dessert fan, but there was a well balanced distribution of sweet, burnt marshmallow, creamy banana, and just enough peanut butter at the bottom.

The tiramisu was good, but it didn’t stand a chance against the banana/peanut butter dessert. It’s light composition was outmatched.

I’m not really sure what to take away from this meal. A lot of these small plates had good stuff going on, they looked appealing on the menu, they featured local and fresh ingredients, and they came out of the kitchen looking great. But the over-salting ruined most of them for me, and it leads me to wonder, is it just my palate that is intolerant of this aspect of the dish? It’s clear that the salt was added on purpose when plated, could it just be that I’m overly sensitive to this oft-used seasoning? Or is there a heavy hand working with the salt in the plating department? I’m nervous to go back and drop another $130 to find out.

Enjoy this month’s selection of food porn.

–

Running with Tweezers: Stuffed Poblano Peppers

Chaos in the Kitchen: Prosciutto and Cheese Wrapped Figs 

Macheesmo: Homemade Peanut Butter Cups

the kitchn: Vegan Corn Tamales

Bon Appétit: Mustard Green Pesto on Pasta with Shiitake Mushrooms and Smoked Mozzarella

Speaking of Star Provisions, Tim Gaddis will be putting on a cheese 101 course tonight at 6PM. Only 25 seats are available, so head there early. I would see you there if I wasn’t out of town…

The first photo is from last night, served with tomatoes from my dad’s garden. His tomato plants are out of control. They are probably 12-14′ tall now, and still growing. I have suspicions of performance enhancing drugs.

The photo below is from Tuesday night. I used some roma and cherry tomatoes from my plants, as well as some porch grown basil. In the salad vinaigrette I used some Sichuan peppercorn mustard from Fauchon in Paris, and it rocked my face off.

Clearly the pizza scene has escalated in Atlanta in just a few short months. The addition of Varasano’s and the new pizzaiolo at Fritti have quashed the Atlanta rumor that you can’t get good pizza in town.

I’ve mostly stayed out of it, but I did watch the great Varasano’s debate from the sidelines, and I must admit that I did see some inconsistency on my own visits. But on my most recent trip there, the pies were outstanding – nearly as good as at Jeff’s house. I must admit that I might like the cheese, but definitely the sauce better at Fritti, but when Jeff’s dough is on point, there just isn’t anyone that can compete.

Just when Fritti and Varasano’s is finding their rhythm, there’s the announcement of another player in town – Max’s Coal Oven Pizzeria. It seems like there is always enough room for another pizza joint in town, and this time Concentrics is going to try their hand, with a secret weapon in tow – a coal fired pizza oven.

If you read Jeff Varasano’s pizza website, you will learn that he thinks the number one important factor of cooking pizza is heat, and heat is what you’re going to get with a coal fired oven, up to 1000 degrees in many cases. This is generally higher than a wood fired oven and definitely higher than most conventional electric ovens.

Coal fired ovens have played a large part in pizza history. The first pizzeria in America, Lombardi’s, to this day still uses a coal fired pizza oven. Other famous NYC pizzerias such as Patsy’s and Grimaldi’s use coal ovens. But New York City almost exceeds the number of coal fired ovens in the rest of the country combined, and forget about the south. There are a few in Florida (which really isn’t the south), then there happens to be one in my hometown of Greenville, SC.

On my first visit to Max’s yesterday, the waiter claimed their oven was the first coal oven in the whole Southeast, but based on Greenville’s Coal Fired Bistro, it looks like Max’s has the distinction of having the first coal fired oven in Georgia. Throw in New York native and pizza aficionado Chef Nick Oltarsh, and Concentrics has successfully marketed a pizzeria worth a visit.

Max’s opened on Friday, and I made my visit Sunday, so these guys haven’t had much of a chance to find their groove. To judge a pizza restaurant open for two days is silly. They are still working out their dough, their cook times, and the pizza makers are still relatively inexperienced in this environment. These are just some initial thoughts, and I definitely plan on going back to form more of an opinion. I think you should do the same. Pictures below.

the interior

Located directly next door to Stats, I believe the two restaurants are actually connected in the back. The restaurant isn’t huge, but has a few large tables, and a moderately sized bar. I dig the exposed wooden beams and brick look.

the menu

Not overbearing, in addition to pizza they offer a few salads, sandwiches, pastas, and they have one hot wing offering. Coal oven hot wings were too enticing for me to pass up. We went with an order of wings and a Margharita pizza (14”, 6 slices, $17.99)

the wings

The only wing sauce offered is lemon pepper parmesan. They’re deep fried then finished in the coal oven and tossed with a generous amount of lemon pepper, herbs, and parmesan.

These were some of the best wings I’ve had in a long time. I don’t know if the whole deep-fry/oven finish thing is the cause, but these large wings had a an extremely crunchy exterior while retaining moist tasty chicken inside. The seasoning was great as well, but I could eat these plain and still enjoy them.

the pizza

Our waiter said the pizzas cook in 90 seconds, but you may want to get an appetizer as we did, because the kitchen is still working things out and it may take some time. When it did arrive, we were pleased with the appearance. There is a lot of cheese, some fresh basil from their garden, a light amount of tomato sauce, and a scattering of roasted tomatoes on top.

The wait staff offers to grate fresh parmesan on top…why not?

the char

Coal ovens are well known for the char they impart on the pizza, and I would say Max’s had a moderate amount. There was enough to impart the slight bitterness I enjoy, but not so much that it would scare anyone without the taste for carcinogen away.

the flop

If not for the roasted tomatoes, the slice would hold up fairly well with a slight fold. That being said, I really liked the tomatoes on top, they were pleasantly acidic and flavorful. The house-made mozzarella was chewy, delicious, and plentiful.

side boob

There was some structure/bubbles on occasion on the end crust.

But in general, the dough was a little stiff and dense. I like a chewy, bubbly pie with better structure. I’m not going to get too down on it though, because these guys just got started and have plenty of time to make these pizzas even better.

Overall it was a promising pie. At this point I prefer Fritti and Varasano’s, but this is a fun restaurant with decent pie, and it’s somewhat close to the Westside where I live. The price wasn’t exactly cheap for two people to eat, but I should mention that I had 2 slices leftover. Also worth noting, there is a parking garage right across the street, and Max’s validates, but only up to $5 and on some weekends the parking is $10 due to all the aquarium tourists.

I hit up Il Mulino when it first opened, and I had a very good meal. I haven’t rushed back, but I stand by my initial post. It wasn’t the best food I’ve ever had, but it was a great night and I’m not sitting here in angst over the money I spent. However, I was curious to see how a restaurant with $40+ entrees would hold up in this market, and I think a lunch buffet is a possible bellwether.

My brother works downtown so we hit up the lunch this past Friday. I don’t want to be overly negative, but suffice it to say, Il Mulino has lost some of its luster in my eyes. Here’s the play by play on why:

12:15PM – I arrive downtown on a nice Atlanta Friday afternoon. $5 to park, could have been worse I guess.

12:20 – We walk in the main entrance. The restaurant is mostly empty, only a few tables occupied. I don’t see the buffet. That’s because it’s in the atrium of the Ritz that is off to the side of the restaurant. We are led into that general direction and told to sit wherever we like. Maître d’ turns around and leaves us there.

12:21 – We realize there are no open tables. Return to maître d’ stand.

12:22 – No, we cannot sit at a regular table. If we sit at a regular table in the restaurant, we must order off the regular menu.

12:25 – Now we are just standing there, hovering in the atrium area, waiting for a table to come available.

12:30 – They decide to pull a table into an empty space in the atrium and prepare it for the two of us. One of the wait staff in the atrium walks up to us and says, “they’re going to make you sit there? That’s just adding insult to injury”.

12:33 – We sit down, view the feeding frenzy at the buffet (below), we order some iced teas, then head to the food.

12:35 – I have my first plate of food. The pan of eggplant rollatini, the salmon, and the bowl of Caesar salad is empty on my first visit. I get marinated zucchini, onions, and mushroom, mozzarella salad, frittata, and penne with marinara. Vegetables are nice, the cheese was tasty, the penne was mushy, and I regretted picking up the frittata.

12:40 – Our waiter comes back to fill up our drinks. “You guys in college?” Ha. When my brother replies that he works at Georgia-Pacific, he replies, “oh yeah, you guys make wood.” Then he goes on to imitate a Jim Gaffigan bit about wood, ending the joke with a surprisingly obscene punch line.

12:42 – Return trip number two to the buffet line.

12:44 – I ask Thomas how he is enjoying his bowl of marinara. He tells me it is tomato soup. Oops.

12:46 – Our iced teas arrive just in time.

12:50 – We return for our final visit as it appears the trays have been replenished. I get some of the salmon (in blurry photo below) topped with mushrooms and the eggplant rollatini. The rollatini is soggy, but tastes good enough. The salmon is cooked well, though it is bland. But the mushrooms on top are very good. Earthy, not slimy, great texture, overall extremely tasty.

12:52 – The now infamous waiter comes by, looks at Thomas’ plate, and says, “What is that, quiche?” Then he looks at me and briskly inquires, “Want more tea bro-ha?” Now I guess that bro-ha is synonymous with dude, duder, el duderino (if you aren’t into that whole brevity thing), but really? This is what the wait staff/diner interaction at Il Mulino has come to?

12:55 – We pay the bill. $10.95 per person plus drinks ain’t so bad. I wasn’t exactly sure what to put for the Captain’s tip. What about you? :-)

Are you ready for some pizza? I should hope so, because this post kicks off two weeks of Pizza Days on Eat It, Atlanta. 

Our first destination is a spot I’ve written about last October, Pizzeria Fortunato. Having only one location in Atlanta, and being over in the Vinings/Smyrna area, Pizzeria Fortunato isn’t the most known pizza restaurant in Atlanta, but it did gain some fame this year when it was named the 2008 critic’s choice for best pizza by Creative Loafing. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my pizza last time, but this time I was going in with a specific goal – to ruthlessly judge each aspect of the pizza. Judging spreadsheet in hand, I headed over there and ordered a 20″ jumbo Margherita, described on the menu as “sweet crushed tomato sauce with bufalini mozzarella cheese, extra virgin olive oil, and fresh garlic and basil.”

With the critic’s choice in hand, and the promise of real cheese and the traditional Naples toppings, I had high hopes that my first pizza selection was going to be one of my favorites. In addition to my ravenous palate, for this affair I had two pizza tasters with me, and the next day I had a blind judge come to provide an unbiased opinion. How did it fare? Here are the results:

note on the judging: Each judge could provide freeform feedback in the selected categories, then they were given the chance to choose a 0-5 rating of each category. As mentioned in the serious announcement, my goal is not to rank pizza places in Atlanta, but hey, I love competition so I’m going to post the scores. Just keep in mind that each pizza destination will have different judges, and pizza style preference will vary, resulting in useless scores when comparing different restaurants. However, these scores can provide some insight when comparing the preferences of the judges at a single locale. 

Dough (average score – 3.5/5)

• “Thin, nice and chewy with good bubbles and crunchy endcrust. Moderate flavor. “
• “Crispy, bubbly, good, but a little tough”
• “Thin but firm, flavorful, good flop, a little salty”
• Blind Taste – “A little soggy, but it was good. Could be because it was reheated”

Sauce (average score – 3.75/5)

• “Tons (too much probably) of crushed sauce, large chunks, sweet with good flavor”
• “A little too sweet, slightly spicy with garlic flavor”
• “Chunky, yummy, sweet, maybe a little too much sauce”
• Blind Taste – “Good flavor” Ed. note: Riveting, I know

Cheese (average score – 2.25/5)

• “Really tasty and real mozz, but hardly any of it.”
• “Not much, bland”
• “Very little, but good flavor”
• Blind Taste - “Too small of an area of cheese, I prefer coverage”

Other Toppings (average score – 2.75/5)

• “Liked the basil, couldn’t really taste it, olive oil was a nice touch too”
• “Basil overpowered by the sauce”
• Blind Taste - “Basil was nice”

Overall (average score – 3.25/5)

• “Wasn’t served hot enough, the pizza was overpowered by the sauce, the slices were huge and the dough was great, but it was out of balance”
• “Real thin and good, served lukewarm”
• “Not really a major standout, highlighted by flavorful cheese and sauce, but the low point was too little cheese and too much sauce”
• Blind Taste - “Would be much better with more cheese and firmer crust”

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My Final Thoughts: We have some interesting results, and definite consistencies here. Most thought the dough was very good; thin, chewy, nice crust, though the blind taster thought it was a bit soggy which was surely due to the fact that it didn’t heat up well with some much sauce on it. Everyone thought that the sauce was flavorful, but that there was too much of it and not enough cheese. While I know that a true Italian pizza doesn’t have as much cheese as what we are used to here in the US, I agree that there could have been more of it on slices as large as this. The cheese I did eat was quite good and definitely had real mozzarella flavor. The sauce was tasty, but they put too much on. It caused the slices to be a little soggy, especially near the center of the pie, but the end crust was fantastic. The olive oil was a great touch as well and it added great flavor. I think with just a few changes in proportions, this could easily be one of my favorite pizzas in Atlanta. 

Well, that was the first post of the Atlanta Pizza Days series, and I hope it was somewhat informative. It’s been fun so far and I’m already learning a lot about the different styles of pizza in Atlanta. I have 3 other pizza destinations cued up, so look for the next post tomorrow!

Not all states can sell raw milk, not because in essence it is bad for you (in fact it’s quite good for ya), but because of the increase in likelihood that harmful bacteria will be introduced into the final product. After some quick research, I realize it’s too lengthy a topic for me to attempt to summarize here (see the 65 page statute summary here), but in short there are only 25 states that can sell raw milk, but even fewer of those states can sell raw milk in stores. 

Well, those that know me from college know that I’m a risk taker, so I was quite excited to give it a try, particularly so I could try to make mozzarella with it. I’ve tried mozzarella before, and had fairly poor results. Both times the cheese kind of fell apart, creating a bland ricotta mixture of sorts. After many conversations with Rebecca from Foodie with Family, I really thought my milk might be the problem. Was my intuition right? Read on!

But first…a quick shot of the meats and cheeses all wrapped up purdy like from Star Provisions….sooo good. 

Here is the milk. Not sure if you can read the label, but it states, “Warning: Not for human consumption. This product has not been pasteurized and may contain harmful bacteria”. Hrmmmm. I wasn’t aware, but it turns out the rules are funny in Georgia; you can’t sell raw milk marketed for human consumption. Kind of creepy. 

Also I picked up an endive mix from The Local Farmstand, with my super salad fave, frisee.

I wasn’t using all of the milk for cheese, just about half of it. The rest will be for drankin’. I took the photo below so you could see the ridiculous viscosity of this stuff. It was quite thick/dense, sweet, and hearty. I couldn’t drink this all the time, but it was almost a rich treat. There could be a lot of uses for a milk of this consistency in cooking, and I imagine if you got used to drinking it, you could never got back to the store-bought stuff. 

Warming up the milk, after I’ve added the citric acid, but right before the veal rennet gets mixed in there. 

Once it hit about 105 degrees, it’s pulled of the heat and rests for 6-7 mins. If you compare this to my previous attempt, you can see how the curds pulled away much better. 

Here’s what I pulled out of the whey, before I started working the cheese. 

There’s 1/2 gallon of milk turned into a glorious un-worked mound of mozzarella. 

At this point I can work it like dough. 

I pulled chunks off and finally got the hang of the “stretching and pulling” that creates the shiny, smooth mozzarella surface. The first few I attempted didn’t come out as smooth looking as this, but it was just due to my inexperience and I’m hopeful for future attempts. 

Finally, for some use… I put together a salad dressing with some olive oil my mom brought back from Italy a few months ago, and some local Georgia Wildflower honey.

Yum. 

This cheese making has been a challenge. Even though the process itself is simple, similar to making pizza dough I realize that little variations, as well as having an experienced “touch”, will greatly affect the outcome. But I look forward to making more progress and am happy to have dove into this endeavor – that’s how you learn!

Yesterday I mentioned I would check out Toscano & Sons, and indeed I did head over there for a quick lunch. It’s located at 1000 Marietta; a relatively new development very close to Georgia Tech. Toscano & Sons is directly next door to where the new 5 Seasons Brewery will be located, which is nice for us Westsider’s.

Toscano & Sons is a small, quaint establishment – there are a few small tables, some food displays with various pastas, sauces, antipasto, and so forth for sale, and then a food prep/butcher counter where food is ordered and prepared. I picked up an Italian carbonated water for < $1 and ordered a small soup of the day, minestrone, for $2. The soup had tons of vegetables and was good.

All the sandwiches were the same price – $4.75. I ordered the toscano which has soppressata, fontina cheese, and arugula on some nice cibatta bread (which they also have for sale). The bread was very fresh with a great crust that was chewy, but not so tough that it cut up the roof of my mouth. It is a small amount of filler, like a real Italian panini, so don’t expect a 1lb Kool Korner’s sandwich.

Having a soup and sandwich, I had plenty of food at a reasonable price, and it was of very good quality. I will definitely go back to try some of the other panini. The porchetta is high on my list.

Mike was happy with his chicken panini. Note that they had some wines there too. I didn’t look at the wines very long, but I recognized a bunch of Italian wines you can get at a lot of places around town.

I picked up a few groceries too – some pizza sauce (sue me, it’s convenient), some Caputo 00 Italian flour, and some domestic mozzarella. They had some imported mozzarella but it’s expensive and I didn’t want to waste the real good stuff on pizza; I’d eat that by itself. Also, I think the imported buffalo mozzarella is the same brand that Costo sells, so I could probably save some $ there.

Last night’s pizza, using the purchased sauce and cheese. It came out very well.

If you in midtown or westside, give Toscano & Sons a try. It’s not exactly the Italian Market I expected, kind of more of a specialty shop, but it was a great quick lunch, something a little different, and i was more than happy with the quality and the price.