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Restaurant: Pranzo Italian Grill and Restaurant

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 10:14:54 -0600

We're in Santa Fe this weekend, and yesterday evening I Strix and I joined some friends at a restaurant downtown called Pranzo.

Whenever we're out of town, we like to try to get types of food we can't get in the restaurant-deprived Farmington area. Since, believe it or not, Farmington doesn't have a single Italian restaurant that doesn't nuke its food from frozen entrées, this was a special treat.

And what a treat it was! Strix agrees that this was easily the best Italian food we have ever had. I had gnocchi with lobster in a saffron cream sauce. Yeah, you heard me right. We started with a grilled polenta and a gorgonzola tomato sauce (yum!), some of the best minestrone I've ever had, the main dish, and some wonderful tiramisu with some espresso. The only part of this meal that wasn't outstanding was the tiramisu. It was good, but just nothing to write home about... although I guess I did just write about it.

Anyway, it's Indian food today.

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Restaurant: Guido's Favorite Foods

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 19:55:49 -0600

We went to a Mensa lunch at Guido's Favorite Foods in Durango, yesterday. People in the Four Corners area of New Mexico frequently cross into Colorado to eat. It's an hour drive each way, but hey, they have a much better selection of restaurants. My County doesn't even have an Italian restaurant, except for one that I wouldn't insult the Italians with by calling it Italian.

Anyway, we both had paninis. Strix had the portobello mushroom panini, and I had the "Guido's Favorite" panini, which was pastrami, onions, roasted red peppers, provalone... God, I'm hungry again.

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Dinner and a Concert

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 22:53:41 -0700

Strix and I are in Telluride for the weekend. It's pretty cold here, being high altitude and all, but apparently not cold enough for the skiiers who are dying for snow. It's a beautiful little town, despite all of the trees being dead. A word of warning, though - there was a sign outside of town that said "Icy Conditions Ahead," and someone had written "PR" before "Icy." Fairly warned, as they say. I wish I could have gotten a picture of it, but I was driving.

We wandered around downtown for a little while and found that most of the restaurants here don't open until 5:30 for dinner. At 5:15, one of them deigned to let us sit down and look over the menu while they got the kitchen up and running. It was an Rustico Ristorante, an Italian restaurant with an impressive menu of gourmet country Italian cuisine. Strix had risotto with saffron and rice, and I had rigatoni alla montanara, which is tube pasta with an arrabiata sauce and Italian sausage. Both were excellent. The bill, unfortunately, reflected the excellence of the meal. I only wish I had been in a better mood to enjoy it.

In an aside, the restaurant's website is worth visiting for the music alone.

After dinner, we took a shuttle over to the High School, which has a surprisingly nice theater, to hear the San Juan Symphony play with the combined community choruses from Durango and Telluride. The concert was very well done, as always.

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Wine: Coastal Estates Pinot Noir, 2006

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 20:52:38 -0600

So what can you say about a $5 bottle of pinot noir? How about, "Hey, that's actually not bad." This isn't a wine to write home about, with little complexity to it. There are some undertones of black cherry or blackberry, which I expect in a pinot noir, but beyond that it's just a flat table wine. The fact that it's actually drinkable and recognizable as a pinot at $5 per bottle is amazing enough, so let's just say it did it's job.

And drank this and used it on a homemade marinara over rotini. The marinara was delicious, and would be a good base for any variation I wanted to make on pasta sauces. I'll definitely be keeping this recipe.

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Restaurant Review: Nana's Italian - Albuquerque

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sat, 21 Jul 2007 21:40:26 -0600

We had lunch at Nana's Italian restaurant in Albuquerque today. I had the manicotti, and Christina had the minestrone soup. Both of us were very happy with our food, and the service was friendly, if not knowledgable. I asked for a glass of the Pinot Noir that I saw in the wine list, and after some time our service returns and says they are all out of the "Pinto Grigio." Yes, she actually said "Pinto."

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Restaurant: Tony's Pizza

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 18:09:32 -0600

I was in Albuquerque for training this morning, so I had lunch at Tony's Pizza.

This is a very small, but authentic little Italian pizzaria, with pictures of the Rat Pack on the wall and the sounds of old Blue Eyes singing that he did it his way playing in the background. I had a highly unhealthy calzone filled with four kinds of red meat. My arteries are hardening as we speak, but it was tasty.

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Restaurant Review: Gilardi's

nobody@vox.com(Paxton) — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 20:45:14 -0700

Tonight, we at at Gilardi's Italian restaurant in Springfield, Missouri. Christina's parents, Dale and Lois, met us here and we treated them to dinner as a 45th wedding anniversary present. That's right - they've been married for 45 years. When Christina and I tell people that we've been married for thirteen years, people are amazed, wondering how two people can be together that long these days, and yet here Dale and Lois are having been together for almost half a century.

Tonight I toasted them and said, "To another 45 years!"

Gilardi's is literally a hidden treasure in Springfield, located in a small building back behind an old Victorian home in the historic section of Springfield. The atmosphere is candle-lit and romantic, and would probably be a great place to propose.

I had the Gilardi's pasta, which was basically rigattoni in a cream sauce with sausage, which sounds very heavy but it was actually not too rich. Christina had the gnocchi pomodoro, and she enjoyed her meal, too.

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