italian food – Dating & Dining

Jason’s Take

This week, it was my turn to pick a restaurant for date night. Don’t tell Linda, but I only made our reservations to Ciao Bella about 20 minutes before we left for our dance lesson. Love Yelp and OpenTable for finding a restaurant and making reservations.

Love. It.

So Ciao Bella is a nice Italian restaurant that happens to have some sushi options, which is weird. But, being an Italian joint, you’ll find lots of the expected pizza, pasta, and seafood.

As you walk in, you definitely notice the smell of fish, but that fades as soon as you get past the bar area. Once into the restaurant proper, it starts smelling good. They’ve got an open–and sprawling–floor plan, so the place is noisy. It’s not great for quiet, intimate conversations.

The drinks were reasonably priced, but not cheap. My cocktails ran $7.75 each, while Linda’s wine cost $10 per glass.

The food was good. The unlimited stream of bread that’s the staple of Italian restaurants everywhere in the Midwest was excellent.

We followed that up with seared wasabi scallops. Totally reccomend. I could have left happy after filling up on scallops and bread.

For our main course, I had the seafood linguini, which was done very well. Good food. Linda had the halibut special. Her fish was kind of dry, but was an otherwise excellent dish.

Dessert was the budino, which is a molten chocolate cake with vanilla gelato. It’s good, but very rich. We didn’t finish it.

All in all, a good place to get a bite, especially if you want to impress a date without worrying about making up deep conversation.

I give it 4 out of 5 pants off.

Linda’s Take

I had no idea where we were going to go to dinner this evening. I asked Jason to surprise me and pick a place, while I tried to look very nice for him. We walked into Ciao Bella, it looked really fancy. I was pleased with Jason’s choice.

I tried a wine that I liked (Moscato). I’m not a wine drinker at all, but thought what the hell. Not bad but a little pricey at $10.00 a glass. But then again, I don’t know what a good price is for wine.

We ordered some wasabi scallops, they were oh-so-good.

Jason ordered a sea food pasta, and I tried halibut for the first time. Kind of a dry dish, but I guess it’s supposed to be. Still tasted great.

This was a really nice place, the staff is really kind, and they always fill your water glass prompt and give you really good fresh bread.

I give it 4 out of 5 pants off

Total Score: 4 out of 5 pants off!

Linda’s Take

So we took the family up to Duluth, MN for our summer vacation this year. We thought some of the best things to do was to try some food places that were on the Triple D show. Of course I’m talking about Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives.

Gannucci’s Italian Market

So Jason tried to plan out each day one of the restaurants that we would try out. Some of the restaurants were better for breakfast, and some of them we found out going to be better lunch or dinner.
Jason did a wonderful job of planning out these places I was super psyched about all of it.

So this Italian restaurant we went to I wasn’t sure if the kids were going to like it. You know most of the time kids just want spaghetti or pizza but they heard there was ravioli on the menu and they were stoked. I try to stay away from most Italian food because I want to watch the calories however Jason said that we needed to share a plate of lasagna and my gosh there are honking huge pieces of this stuff.

We also decided to get some sort of sandwich and a split that in half so we had lunch in an Italian restaurant that was cool in decorative in an old building and we shared our lunch and I felt like if we would have gotten spaghetti it would have been Lady and the Tramp all over again.

Both of our girls decided on the ravioli and they told me that I must learn how to make this and become better at cooking ravioli I felt very ashamed.

Our son got a yummy meatball type sandwich that he absolutely loved and if there’s any place in the world he can get a meatball sandwich that’s what he will order. Doesn’t matter if it’s Subway, or the most fanciest Italian restaurant, or your deli sandwich place down the road, I think I’m going to start calling him meatball head.

Not only is this place a restaurant that serves very good Italian food in huge helpings but they sell a lot of their meats and cheeses in a deli format, I think my husband wanted to take a big sausage back to the hotel room.

Prices for this place are pretty average good wholesome Italian food for the price of 8 to $10 per plate not too bad for feeding a family of 5.

I give this place 4 out of 5 pants off

Jason’s Take

On our family vacation this summer, we decided to do the Triple-D tour of Duluth, MN. For the tour, we hit as many restaurants from Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives as we could. We did a pretty good job of it. We only missed one restaurant within 20 miles, and that was in another state. We were planning to go there, but ran out of time.

Our first stop on the tour was Gannucci’s Italian Market. This place totally qualifies as a dive. There mismatched furniture, a one-person bathroom that doesn’t lock, and 30 year old paint on some of the walls. When you first walk in, it looks like a tiny deli counter with a couple of tables. Then they walk you around the corner and you find out there’s an actual restaurant hidden through the doorway. The service was kind of slow, too.

Forget the decor. Forget the service. The food is the star of the show. The girls got the ravioli and loved it. I had the lasagna, and it was better than my mommy used to make. (sorry Ma!) I don’t remember what Linda or the boy had, but they both enjoyed it. (Editor’s Note: I don’t read Linda’s reviews before I write mine. I did share a sandwich with her, but I don’t remember anything about it. Take that for what it’s worth.)

Totally worth going. Four pants off.

Total score: 4 out of 5 pants off