Restaurants

Delicious Pizza @ Woodbridge Pizzeria

Visiting friends and family in the Central Valley of California is fun. We always enjoy ourselves.  In the spring we sometimes get to see the Stockton Ports play a ballgame.  It is also challenging (not for the obvious family drama) because we are always in search of something to eat that tastes better than it looks. That might sound strange but actually we have eaten at places where the photos looked a whole lot better than what was put on our plate.

The San Joaquin Valley has a slew of restaurants that are mostly chains, which I have nothing against, but it is more fun and challenging to find a local business to support if we can. We dine almost weekly at one of our neighborhood restaurants in the Noe Valley area of San Francisco.

This quest recently led us to discover a wonderful pizza restaurant, called simply enough Woodbridge Pizzeria.  They are located in both Woodbridge (the home to some great Lodi Appellation Wineries) and in Lodi which is good to know when we are wine-tasting and hungry. Read More »

Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co.

Next to myself and music, my husband Andy’s favorite things in the world are yummy pizza and tasty brews. So when the kind staff at the Grove Park Inn referred us to Asheville Pizza & Brewing Co. during a recent visit to the area, I’m pretty sure Andy thought he was in heaven. Read More »

It must be a cold, drizzly day.  Sure enough, it is.  Cold, rainy and drab.

But I knew it was rainy before I even looked out the window.  How?  Because I’m dreaming of pizza again.  But not the pizza of my childhood from Rodolfo’s.  No, I’m guessing it’s just as blah and dreary in New Jersey this time of year.  I want to eat a slice of great pizza outside, with the sun shining on my face and a sweet beach nearby.  I want to fill my belly at the Pizza Garden in Saint Augustine, Florida.

Truth be told, I was thinking about Saint Augustine last week.  In my Halloween preparations, I was thinking about this old and supposedly haunted city.  The oldest city in the United States, you’ll hear a lot about the ghouls and ghosts that still reside in the area.  Many claim to Back in my life before kids, my husband and I would often head down to this town for the weekend, stay at a Bed and Breakfast and enjoy just walking around.  Never saw a ghost though.

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We were regulars at Casa Miguel’s in Greenwood, Indiana when Mike and Angie Lee owned this little house converted to a restaurant. We tried to support the folks who bought the Mexican concept when the Lees retired, but it just wasn’t the same. My husband swore they fiddled with the recipes. I simply felt sad walking in to everything the same, but different.

Albatross Pizza Emporium soars

So when the sign changed to Albatross Pizza Emporium, we knew we’d drop in for a test run, if only to do our “support your community” duty.

OK, we’re done with the charity  on this one. Albatross earned our full-blown patronage because we loved the pizza. And it didn’t hurt that the owner, Julianne Featheringill, made it a point to stop by our table for comments, suggestions and just a good old-fashioned chat.

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Pasta Moto "Quick Taste of Italy" new in SF

San Francisco Metreon Shopping Center, in the San Francisco Center has a large lower floor filled with mini versions of larger restaurants as well as your basic food stalls.   Think International Terminal at SFO more than Harrod’s Department Store’s famous Food Halls.

Westfield – Metreon is a state of the art technology and entertainment marketplace covering over 350,000 square feet on four levels. It is the new home of the old Emporium-Capwell’s for you old school shoppers and citizens like me. Remember that crazy Ferris Wheel on the roof of the store at Christmas? How was that legal?

While shopping at Bloomingdale’s and checking out the Rosetta Stone kiosk in the mall, I got really hungry all of a sudden. Maybe from thinking of my trip to Spain and all the fresh seafood I was going to consume!  Deep down inside though, my craving was for simple comfort food rather than a balanced sensible meal.  Good thing I was at a mall because the lower level produced the perfect choice, Pasta Moto! Read More »

Welcome, Monical's Pizza

I hate it when my brother gets something I don’t.

Never mind that we’re both in our 40s, adults with professional careers, mortgage payments and all those life balance questions middle-age Americans struggle with. He had a Monical’s Pizza on his side of Indianapolis and I didn’t. And he was always waving it in our face, saying things like, “Hey, you guys want to go over to Monical’s for dinner? The kids love that place.”

See what I mean? That kind of superiority from the kid brother eats at you over time.

Well, nana nana boo boo. Guess who just opened their doors in Greenwood? Yep, now I, too, can enjoy their thin and pan crust pizzas whenever I want to, and I don’t even have to drag along kids. But don’t tell my sibling this secret: I failed to notice this new addition to our restaurant families until last week.

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Whit, the boys and I all headed to our childhood the other day when we stopped at the local Round Table for some pizza. We were headed to the local movie theater to see “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs” and wanted to start the night off right.

I forgot how good the pizza is at Round Table and it’s pretty darn quick. We partook of the few video games our kids could reach and before we spent $2.00 it was time to eat.

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Incredible Pizza Company fun

The first time I realized Incredible Pizza Company wasn’t just another place to let rugrats roam wild was when I read the  interactive digital billboards on U.S. 31 last month. Let’s face it: A kiddie place rarely advertises a buffet featuring steak and potatoes.

So when my curiosity over what this new chain had done to our old Kroger building hit peak level (defined as “Yep, everyone else on the southside has seen it, so I can probably walk in now.”), I corralled hubby into going over there last Friday. The chaos of color and sound hits you when you walk through the doors, but what sunk in first was the fact this place wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg, which is always a welcome welcome.

The best way to describe Incredible Pizza Company is Golden Corral meets Chuck E Cheese versus Disney World.

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Artichoke Panzanella salad

Amici’s East Coast Pizzeria in one sentence: Thin crust pizza and pasta chain that is cheery enough but not too loud or prefab, plus it’s toasty warm on cold foggy evenings because of the brick ovens.

Who you’ll see there: Families, volleyball team, tourists, solo travelers

Make sure to try: Panzanella salad with artichokes, onions, capers, tomatoes and some crisp lettuce. The small is big enough to share when you pair it with one of Amici’s super crispy thin crust pizzas.

It’s okay to skip: The breadsticks with ranch dressing appetizer — seriously, eating breadsticks and ranch dressing before your pizza is why America is fat. If you need a ranch dressing fix, put it on a house salad.

Best dessert: Cheesecake with two forks to share — simple, light and lemony

Service: Friendly, relatively inexperienced young people, maybe even a first job for a lot of kids. Absolutely no upsell, but they can  answer questions if you ask them. Read More »

I finally found out what’s worst than a crowded buffet at Pizza Hut.

Pizza Hut

No, I’m not the kind to get skeeved out over germ issues in these situations. If you added up all the hand sanitizer I’ve used in my lifetime, it wouldn’t amount to a purse-sized bottle — I assume my Maker gave me an immune system to fight off the everyday dirt of life. 

But I have learned to avoid the Pizza Hut lunch buffet because it brings out the hunter in me. When they bring out a hot pizza straight from the oven, it’s my responsibility to place myself in a position against everyone else in the restaurant to get a slice. I watch the activity behind the counter, so I know when I can get a drop on my fellow diners in that mad rush. I can’t have a conversation with my companions, because I’m on edge to snag that next prize: a slice of hand-tossed sausage and cheese or a thin-crust cheese-only. 

And then there’s the golden ring: a dessert pizza, preferably cherry. One of these days I’m literally going to blow up with anger if the pig in front of me takes three slices again and leaves those of us in line hungry. 

That’s a lot of stress over a meal, frankly.

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