Old Italian Place but new to me......

Last night I had dinner with my book club at Angela's Restaurant on Ridge and Forest Road. We had read the book Heat, by Bill Buford which was a non-fiction book based upon a journalists pursuit of the roots of Italian cooking and included a stint in Mario Batali's restaurant, Babbo (eaten there - fabulous!) as well as an apprecticeship under a butcher in Tuscany. The book was interesting especially for foodies. So we had decided to have Italian food and someone had recommended trying Angela's. It has been around for years, but I had never eaten there or really heard much about it.

We arrived for our reservation for 12 and had two tables side by side - not really conducive to book club discusssion....but we ended up pushing the tables together and it worked fine. The place was PACKED on a Tuesday night. We found out there was a reservation for 45 people in the cozy restaurant.....the wine was all fairly priced in the $30-40 range and we chose a chianti and a pino grigio. The service was a little bit slow but...considering the large party seated before us...it was understandable. The menu had your typcial pasta dishes, but they seemed to specialize in seafood and veal. They had about 5 or 6 specials and I ended up ordering one - two giant ravioli's stuffed with 4 cheeses and spinach, with a gorgonzola cream sauce, topped by lump crab over fresh spinach. It was really, really good. A bit rich, but a ton of lump crab on top, the gorgonzola sauce was creamy but not overpowering like some can be. I really enjoyed it. One of my fellow diners got the rockfish special and really enjoyed it, the mussel appetizer someone got had about 2 dozen mussels in it and a fab broth. Also the folks who stuck with the straight up pasta (stuffed shells and meat ravioli) really enjoyed their meal as well. I definitely would like to go back and try it when it is less busy.

One thing that really impressed me was their ability to split two bottles of red wine among 5 people and to let us all pay separately. This always seems to be an issue when dining with large groups of people trying to each pay for their own dinner.

I suggest you try this local, family owned joint next time you want to have some Italian food.

Next month our book is the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo....I wonder what we can pair with that for dinner.....