Now I Want A Pasta Making Machine

Pazzo Pasteria

13777 Nacogdoches Road, #107

(near O'Connor Road)

  When I was a kid growing up, I don't think my Italian grandmother ever made her own pasta. There was a shop in Hammond, Louisiana -- the local metropolis five miles away -- that sold fresh, so why bother? Besides, she never worried too much about the shape of the pasta, and I've pretty much adopted the same who-cares mentality about it. I buy and use a few basic shapes: capellini, if I want long pasta (though I'll occasionally use fettucine or linguine, and rarely spaghetti); conchiglie, if I want short pasta, or occasionally orecchiete, cavatapi, penne, ziti or rigatoni if they're readily available. Lots of times they aren't. And when you're using store-bought dry pasta, it doesn't really make a lot of difference.

 But after one dinner at Pazzo Pasteria I feel a little differently about the whole subject. There's no store-bought pasta in the place, and I think I could actually tell the difference. Who'd 'a ever have thunk it?

 We had been at the movies, an uncommon event for us, seeing the new Christmas movie Red One at the Quarry; and since we had already covered a third of the distance involved, I figured we might as well go the rest of the way. 

 It's not a big place, just two units in an ordinary strip center, and the well-lit dining room is barely half the total. The ambience is American suburban with a hint of nostalgic Italian, mostly provided by the unobtrusive soundtrack of quiet modern music interspersed with things that would have made my mother exclaim, "Oh, I love this song!" (A single song from Perry Como would keep her happy for hours.) It was all quite comfortable. We were greeted with a big smile and I had the feeling that, if the hostess had known our names, she would have introduced us around to the other diners. 

What the ratings mean

 Having come so far, we decided to splurge a little bit, so we started with wine and an appetizer of spiedini. (I had been thinking vaguely of making some myself, and wanted to see how it was done here.) The name, spiedini, means "on a skewer" or something like that; when I was a kid, it was what we called kebab. Pazzo's version is from some other part of Italy. It was mozzarella cheese wrapped in prosciutto, which is a good combination, but it was served on a fabulously delicious bed of spinach dressed with a balsamic vinaigrette and coarsely grated parmesan that lifted it way beyond merely good. 

 We each freshened our palates with a small house salad and bread. The salad was a mix of lettuce and spinach with a few interesting ingredients added, most notably some really piquant finely-sliced onion that gave a wonderful and unexpected kick to the course. All this was topped with an excellent vinaigrette dressing, not the balsamic version that had been so nicely applied to the previous course, but a milder sort that complemented the character of the salad's ingredients. The bread was good but not that good, especially compared to everything else. One breadbasket is complementary at Pazzo; after that they're something like three bucks. I'm sure they do that because of people like me, who will happily make an entire meal of the bread, given the opportunity and a certain superior quality. In this case I was happy with just the complementary quantity.

 All the pasta dishes offered come in two sizes. Since we'd started with appetizer and salad, the smaller size seemed sufficient, and they were; but when I go back, if I don't have an appetizer, I will want the larger size. I guarantee it. My wife's choice was fusilli gorgonzola: pasta spirals in a creamy cheese sauce, with chicken. I'm the opposite of a big fan of gorgonzola cheese, which is the Italian version of bleu cheese. I think of it as rotten, so I never eat it. But I did sample her pasta course, and found it tasty. I still would never order it myself. In the words of somebody more famous than me, My gorge rises at it.

 I went with bucatini fiorentia: tubes of pasta in a butter and garlic sauce, with spinach, mushrooms and chicken. Oh. My. God. Oh, my God! The combination of flavours was outstanding, and the textures! This is why freshly-made pasta is better than store-bought. I had never had bucatini before; I thought the word had something to do with oil wells (it means something like "little bore-holes" and turns out to be an apt description of the shape). But now that I've had bucatini at Pazzo, I want a pasta making machine so I can have it whenever I want at home. (I won't get one, of course, but at least now I can see the point of one.)

 All in all, an outstanding meal. I wish I'd picked a better wine to go with it.

Another Good Choice

Maui's On Main

 1022 North Main

(at Lexington)

 I don't get out as much as I used to. Partly this is because of the increasingly intractable heat of the summers around here, and partly it's just plain ol' lack of interest in the world around me. But sometimes I force myself to shower and shave and go through all the tedious effort of selecting clothes to wear and deciding where in this vast and bustling city I feel like going. Often, the answer is "Nowhere," and so I stay home again.

 But last night my wife and I managed to rouse ourselves to action, largely by the draw of curiosity about Maui's On Main, a newish (six months old or so) and well-regarded burger joint not too far from home. It's in the space once occupied by Pete's Tako House, which long ago made the short move into downtown; and later by a locavore spot that wasn't good enough to long survive. 

What's that mean?

 Maybe this place will do better. It certainly impressed more on a first visit. We were immediately, almost boisterously, greeted as soon as we went in; it felt like arriving a little late at a neighbour's backyard barbecue. After a couple of explanations of menu items, we made our selections: my wife chose the regular single-patty hamburger with fries, while I went for the Loco Moco.

 It might have been nice enough out to sit on the patio, but we opted for a table in the tiny dining room. When we were making that choice I thought it was too windy outside -- I saw the decorations billowing in the breeze -- and only after we were seated did I realize that there was a huge-ass fan going out there. But we were comfortable enough inside. There was a kid's video playing on the one TV on the wall behind me, softly enough not to distract. Later, the sun got low enough that I had to change seats or be blinded; they could use a shade on the west-side window. But overall the place was exactly as it looks: small, unpretentious, funky, maybe even hip (I'm no judge of that anymore, I can assure you). 

 

 The food seemed to take a substantial time to arrive, but that may have been more perception than reality (owing to my own thoughts provoked by the particular video being shown), so let's not linger on the point. It came before too long, and the only consequence was that my wife's fries weren't as hot as they should have been. Everything else was fine.

 

 I don't know what makes Hawaiian rolls so good -- I've seen all kinds of recipes, some with sugar, some with brown sugar, some with pineapple juice, but I've never tried making them -- but after tasting my wife's excellent (and very large) burger at Maui's, we both have a new favourite. If I was rating the food based on just that burger, it'd be five jalapeños for sure. Everything in the burger was excellent and just thinking about it now is making me plan another visit. Best burger in town? Gotta say yes.

 

 My own dish, Loco Moco, was good too. Not as good; so few things in life are. But good. It consists of spam-fried rice, a traditional Hawaiian dish, topped with two hamburger patties, brown gravy, and two sunny-side-up fried eggs. It's served with a pasta salad. Both the main dish and the side dish come in copious quantity. I could only manage to eat half my dinner, but it came in a go-box so was no trouble to pack up and carry away. I expected to have a complaint about the cheap single-use plastic utensils, but they proved to be up to the task in this instance. (Though I still wish more restaurateurs would avoid them.)

 I was happy with the dish overall. A lighter touch with the brown gravy would be an improvement; it overwhelmed the other flavours of the dish, to the point where I couldn't actually taste the spam at all. And if I'm being honest, I would have been content with one hamburger patty and one egg on the dish. But this is America, Land of the Supersized Serving, so who can really complain about that? And I loved the pasta salad for its creamy simplicity.

 Anyway, it doesn't matter. Because next time I go to Maui's On Main, I'm getting the burger.

Kind of a Surprise, Really

The Dogfather

6211 San Pedro

 at El Mio and Recoleta

Going up and down San Pedro, I've passed this place perhaps seven hundred and fifty thousand times. Most of the time I don't even notice it. After all, other than the font on the sign out by the street -- made to emulate the font of the famous movie series that the name puns -- there is nothing to draw the attention away from the garish green tire shop next door and cause one to notice the existence of this modest little corner eatery.

And yet, there it is, and has been for years, and I've never tried it before. To be honest, until about a year ago, I never even thought about trying it. I mean... it's hot dogs. Like any all-American boy of the post-war era, I grew up thinking of hot dogs as something akin to haute cuisine, and there was nothing better than a wienie sliced up on spaghetti or macaroni and cheese or just nestled into a nice warm bun with mustard and relish and ketchup. But then the warnings started hitting. Rat hair! Bone! Insect parts! Lord knows what sort of contaminants were hiding in those jiggly pinkish tubes of cast-off ingredients. 

And so here I am, forty-nine years old again (for the Nth time) and I have ordered a hot dog, or something like it, as a meal exactly three times as an adult: once at the airport in Chicago -- because, you know, they're famous for their dogs; once at a place on Austin Highway named for Chicago -- because, you know, they must know how to do it like it's done in Chicago (a disappointment), and most recently at a restaurant in Roswell, Georgia, because I'd been thinking about The Dogfather while driving -- I don't know why -- and how I'd never tried it. Plus hot dogs were the chef's special* that evening. 

It occurs to me that hot dogs are not the contaminated mystery meat we were warned about in the waning days of my childhood. I trust our government enough to believe that they have responded to those complaints and that the ingredients in your average hot dog, or whatever type of sausage you're dealing with, are reasonably safe. 

And here I am at loose ends for dinner: home alone for a week (well, the dog is here with me, but she's not much for dinner conversation), and tired of leftovers and thrown-together meals of Whatever. So I decide to go out, and while perusing the options on Google Maps, I remember the Dogfather. I've been telling myself I was going to try it out; tonight's the night! This -- this -- is the appropriate juncture! Now is the time! So I did.

This is one of those places where you order at the counter and the cheerful young cashier (he reminded me of Hank Azaria playing the dog walker on Mad About You) will bring your order to you. There are a few tables inside, maybe room enough for fourteen people, plus a few barstools facing a counter under a window. Outside there are five or six picnic tables and a few small cafe two-tops. The weather being remarkably cool for mid-July (only eighty degrees for a high today; can you believe it?), I thought I'd give the patio a try. Expectations were low, as San Pedro is usually a busy, loud street: seven lanes in that area. But the traffic was no distraction (except for one moment when some J.D. in a black pickup had to show off his exhaust note). The seating was comfortable enough, I was untroubled by flies, and the wind was low enough that napkins didn't fly away. There was some music being played on a P.A., just loud enough to mask any conversation at other tables but not so loud as to impose itself.

I decided on a Brat. I figured I couldn't go too far wrong with that; most of the other menu options seemed a little too fru-fru for a first-time hot-dog-restaurant sampler. I wanted something I could identify, for comparison purposes. I also ordered some curly fries, and I was going to get a beer but they only have it in cans, so I went for a fountain drink. (They have some brand I've never heard of, but it was okay; better than Pepsi, anyway.)

Brat with curly fries

The menu describes the Brat as being made with beer, and served with spicy mustard, horseradish, crema, kraut and fried onions. There's no mention of the bun, but I assumed there would be one. I was right. There was, and let me tell you this: the bun and everything they put on it was great. Great! The bratwurst may or may not have been made with beer; I'll take their word for it. But it was delicious, marvelously seasoned and expertly cooked just to the near edge of crispy. The mustard and horseradish had just an elegantly subtle kick to them, and were not slathered on in dollops designed to conceal some other failing. The pickled kraut was delicious, made with red cabbage, and I'm pretty sure somebody did their dissertation on How Much Kraut Should a Brat Have? And those fried onions were like the thin, crispy, seasoned onion rings you used to be able to get at Frontier decades ago. The overall effect? Great!

What's that mean?

The curly fries, too, were outstanding. I'm not a big fan of curly fries in general, but this serving will raise the entire genre in my overall esteem. Perfectly fried, perfectly seasoned, escorted by a small container of spicy ketchup, and served in enough quantity to satisfy without overdoing it. I didn't feel the least bit guilty even as I downed the least little crumb clinging to my dish. 

* Though the food in that Georgia restaurant was good, I use the term "chef" loosely.