Italian … Not so Much

We had to go to town tonight to pick up my car so in an effort to “save time” (my excuse) we decide to eat out.  A friend had told us that Carrabbas had an excellent brick oven pizza.  The comment I remember was “the pizza is just like an Italian pizza”.  Having just returned from Italy about 6 weeks ago, we were very excited to try this pizza.  When we sat down at the chef’s bar (we wanted to watch the chefs at work) we ordered our wine.  By the way, I would not recommend watching the chefs at Carrabbas … this is not a 5 star restaurant and the “show” is sometimes disappointing and often appetite suppressing. 

Anyway, since I have a belief that if you are in an Italian restaurant, you should order an Italian wine, we ordered a 2007 Chianti Classico Reserva from Banfi. This turned out to be a good wine; although the $41 price tag (even in a restaurant) was a bit steep. 

            We also ordered a Margarita pizza.  Sadly, when it arrived it did not live up to its Italian heritage.  The pizza had potential … the crust was certainly thin enough, there was plenty of basil, tomatoes, and mozzarella cheese, and the edge was cooked crispy.  Unfortunately, the middle of the crust was not cooked enough and was in fact somewhat doughy and definitely not crisp.  For me pizza is all about the crust and in this case it just did not deliver.  Luckily, for dessert we had a limoncello bread pudding with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.  This excellent dessert made up for the pizza and we left satisfied, even if somewhat disappointed.  Well time to go home for more wine and some chocolate (because as everyone knows bread pudding is not a proper dessert).