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Oscar’s Special

I decided to go with Oscar’s Special, which included chicken, shrimp, spinach, prosciutto, mozzarella and a side pasta. The first thing you could taste from the dish was the sauce, it was very rich and creamy. All of the meat and seafood was cooked just right. However, I did have trouble with the shrimps due to the fact that they were cooked with the tails on. I received a very unexpected case of crunchiness when I bit into one. Overall, the dish was very enjoyable. One note that I should mention is that there could have been a little less salt in the dish. Because you were already cooking with ingredients that tend to be salty to begin with (i.e. prosciutto, shrimp and mozzarella) there wasn’t a need to overly salt the dish as you could have relied on the saltiness of those ingredients to do the seasoning for you and the dish would have been dynamite. The side pasta however was not what I was expecting though. The pasta was cooked perfectly al dente, but the marinara was not as sweet as it should have been, and almost seemed from a can or a jar. I think that a nice addition to the dish was to have included the pasta in the dish itself. It would have given it much more texture, that creamy sauce could have balanced out and had something to adhere to and may not have made the dish so salty. When the night was over, however, I went home full and satisfied from the healthy portions. -HW

Reviewed at Ziti’s Italian Trattoria.

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Eggplant Ravioli with Oil & Garlic Sauce

My anticipation kept rising as I waited for my meal to arrive as the portions served to those around me were ginormous.  The woman sitting to my right had a portion of ziti large enough to serve a family of four, which made me very happy as that woman is my wife, and I knew immediately that I would be eating her leftovers the following night.  My portion of Eggplant Ravioli was certainly generous but alas only enough for perhaps a meal and a half.

I ordered a bit off the menu for this meal.  The eggplant ravioli normally comes with a cream sauce, but I thought an oil and garlic would be a bit lighter.  The over-sized ravioli stuffed with eggplant were served with additional pieces of eggplant in a subtle sauce.  The food tasted as if it came from your grandmother’s kitchen.  I would have preferred the flavors to be a little more intense, a little more complex, which would have taken the meal from good home cooking to a foodie’s delight.  It is important to note, however, that the leftovers from my meal (and for that matter from the meal of that lovely woman sitting to my right) tasted even better the following night.  Home cooking always does. -JD

Reviewed at Ziti’s Italian Trattoria.