Libretto's - New Parktowne Village location

Il Diavolo (back half) and San Gennaro (front). The Il Diavolo was spicy and one of our very favorite menu items!

Soon after moving back to Charlotte in 2012 I visited the Ballantyne location of Libretto's - post here. Now a third Charlotte location at Parktowne Village (corner of Woodlawn and Park Rds.) joins Ballantyne and Epicentre. I recently had two very enjoyable meals at Libretto's - Parktowne and even had the opportunity to speak with owner Mike Libretto about his restaurants and the restaurant business here in Charlotte. 

All of the food was good and the atmosphere at this location is pleasant, nice for couples and families with a bar available for single diners as well. The eggplant parmigiana remains a personal favorite. However, this was my first time trying the pizza and it was also very good - so many delicious specialty pies to choose from. My husband and I both love spicy foods so the Il Diavolo was right up our alley with pepperoni, spicy sausage, jalapenos and roasted garlic - yum! The stuffed mushrooms were also fantastic as an appetizer and we enjoyed the linguini with clam sauce as well. The best news is that this new location delivers to where we live - awesome! I look forward to returning to Libretto's to try more soon, including the wings, Square pizzas, Calzones and Strombolis. 

 Out front.

 Neat bar/outdoor area. When the weather is nice you can sit outside overlooking the fountain!

Full bar. 

Half of a Roasted Beet Salad - kitchen was nice enough to split this for us.

Linguini with White Clam Sauce - garlicky and delicious!

Florentine (right half) and New Yorker (left).

Display of pizzas and garlic knots. Easy to stop in for a quick lunch.

Tasty garlic knots with the wonderful tomato sauce.

Stuffed Mushrooms with sausage in a creamy alfredo sauce - so good!

Eggplant Parmigiana - a beautiful rendition and still one of my top picks.

Eggplant Rollatini - awesome appetizer - would be enough for small appetite meal.

Side of meatballs. Must try. The baby also loved these!

Cannoli we tried was good! Tiramisu, cheesecake and a brownie are also available to satisfy the sweet tooth.

Dining in the Dark - A Feast for the Senses - Jan. 30 at Osso

A neat food opportunity for Charlotte area diners:

Good Eats and Meets is partnering up with the new culinary hot spot Osso in the trendy NC Music Factory to bring you a meal, where nothing meets the eye and is unlike any other you have ever had before! Imagine that you are recognizing friends only by their voice, where sounds tell a story, aromas come alive and elegance is felt. In this era of information overload, visual stimulation has reached an all time pinnacle. But imagine, just for an hour or two that you cannot see, that you are abandoning vision in exchange for a new, more stimulating dining experience – this is “Dining in the Dark”...A Feast for the Senses!!!

The purpose of our dinner is to give guests a unique eating experience while fostering a greater understanding of what it's like to be visually impaired and to raise awareness for their cause.

During your Dining in the Dark meal, you will savor a multi course meal in a room where you can’t see a single solitary thing, from your plate of mystery food to the faces of your fellow diners. It will be more than a culinary experience, it will be a sensory and social experience to the tenth power. 

The evening will begin at 8:00 pm where all the guests will mix and mingle over cocktails (one is included in the cost of the meal-surprise!) before entering our inner sanctum of darkness. We will seat everyone and make sure that you are comfortable before the meal will begin. The rest is up to you. We will be offering a phone check and anything else that might interfere with your meal. 

Spread the word and come with a couple of your friends. Seating is limited and will go fast! Don't wait and miss out! Every previous Dining in the Dark event has SOLD OUT. 

The cost is $39 per person or $79 for a couple for the full meal with one cocktail/beer/wine, as well as tax and tip. The final price on Eventbrite includes the tax, tip and Eventbrite fees and is all inclusive. What a deal for this truly unique event!

Good Eats and Meets is the largest dining, drinking and socializing group in the US and you can find more information at...

http://www.meetup.com/geamclt

https://www.facebook.com/goodeatsmeets

https://twitter.com/goodeatsmeets

http://pinterest.com/goodeatsmeets

http://instagram.com/goodeatsmeets

Osso Restaurant and Lounge offers Italian cuisine, both classical and modern prepared by one of Charlotte's most followed and recognized Chefs, Gene Briggs of the famed Blue. http://ossocharlotte.com/

Zio's Casual Italian

Chicken Piccata served with homemade pasta and vegetables.

Zio's Casual Italian is one of my new Charlotte finds. A friend recommended that we meet here for dinner several weeks ago and I am so glad that I now know about this place! Zio's has a pleasant yet casual atmosphere, good service, and most importantly - delicious food. You enter by going down a short staircase and the restaurant is welcoming to families as well as to groups and couples. The food is truly worth coming back for - especially the grilled pizza (loved the pear and Gorgonzola pie) and the house made pasta. I also really enjoyed the Caesar salad. I look forward to returning here again soon to try more menu items.

Baby Arugula Salad with Asparagus.



Caesar Salad.



Grilled pizza: half Margarita and half Pear & Gorgonzola.

Libretto's Pizzeria & Italian Kitchen

Eggplant Parmesan lunch special.

Soon after arriving in Charlotte I dined at Libretto's Pizzeria & Italian Kitchen for lunch with a family friend who works in a similar field. There are two area Libretto's: this one is in Ballantyne and the second one is uptown at the EpiCentre. Additionally, there is a NYC location and a fourth location in Jacksonville, Florida.

Libretto's serves a full Italian menu with specialty pizzas, salads, soups, traditional entrees and pastas as well as heros, wings, calzones and desserts. For lunch there are some great specials including the eggplant parm special that I tried. To start, we shared some of the delicious, buttery, garlic knots served with tomato sauce for dipping. These are truly worth the carbs and were great with the salad that comes with the lunch special (salad not pictured). The eggplant parmesan includes choice of pasta with sauce and it's a huge portion! I took half home for later. The dish itself was quite pleasing, with a well-balanced tomato sauce, lots of cheese and plenty of eggplant goodness. The pasta was also tasty with that same great tomato sauce.

I had one odd thing happen when I went to the restroom - I won't go into great detail but let's just say that the restroom needed some real attention! I mention this mainly because as soon as I told our waiter about the problem we noticed that the staff shut down the restroom for cleaning - a good sign that they actually checked out the issue when I brought it to their attention. Service was actually quite good overall, which is always welcome.

I really enjoyed my visit to Libretto's and I look forward to trying them out again soon for another lunch or for dinner. They are also prepared for folks who want takeout also as you can order pizza near the door and take it to-go. I will be back!

Garlic knots.

Blue Moon Pizza - Buckhead

Delicious Portabella Mushrooms topped with "Grandma's sauce", goat cheese and basil. A great first taste.

I was recently invited to check out Blue Moon Pizza, a local chain with four Atlanta area locations. Owners Kelvin and Mandy Slater have built a fun concept including a delicious variety of "specialty moons" (pizzas) as well as salads, "flatwiches" (sandwiches with bread made from pizza crust dough and appetizers. In addition to the Buckhead location (pictured below), there are locations in Marietta, Smyrna and now Sandy Springs as well. Click here for specific location information.

We had the opportunity to taste the mushroom appetizer (above) as well as several pizzas and one of the salads. Everything was good, with enough spice already added to make red pepper flakes a non-issue (at other pizza places we are always shaking those little glass bottles to try and get more flavor on the food!) I particularly enjoyed the portabella mushrooms, the Santa Fe style pizza and the Cobb salad. I look forward to trying more options on a future visit. We also had a fun time talking with Kelvin and Mandy, who are obviously dedicated to their concept of making Blue Moon "an everyday place that still feels special" for their customers. There is a loyalty program as well as a newsletter.

Casual, pleasing dining area adorned with special blue moon decor. The restaurant also features the amazing Coke machine with dozens of possible flavor combinations. I had fun trying out cherry Dr. Pepper - a rare treat!



Top half: BBQ chicken pizza; below: Jerk chicken pizza - just the right amount of spice!



Top half: Grandma's Pizza; below: my personal favorite, the Santa Fe featuring black beans, avocado and jalepenos - spicy and so delicious.



Calvin enjoyed a blue "moontini" - all locations feature a full bar with $5 martinis every Thursday.



Cobb salad - this is no ordinary salad! All salads at Blue Moon are served on pizza crusts - a neat touch.

Blue Moon also features a special gluten-free pizza crust, which can be used for all of the pies and for garlic bread. There is a list of gluten-free menu items and even a gluten-free chocolate brownie. Additionally, the restaurant offers lunch specials like a slice of cheese pizza, a side salad and a soda for $6.99.

Delivery is available within 3 miles of any location. Blue Moon also features Take-n-Bake: you pick up a pizza that is ready to be cooked in your oven at home. The pizza comes with a special baking tray to help you achieve that perfect crispness!

If you haven't already become a fan, give Blue Moon a try!

Disclosure: The meal described in this review was complimentary

Alfredo's - An Atlanta Classic

Calamari.

Somehow I lived in Atlanta for more than four years before I dined at Alfredo's Italian Restaurant. I drive past it all the time and heard that it exemplified "old-school Italian" cooking so I'm not sure why I waited so long! One reason might be that the parking lot is always full and a reservation is a must on the weekend. Luckily when we had a friend visiting from out of town we reserved a table and had a lovely meal. It really is old-style Italian (and old-style Atlanta, having operated for more than 35 years), with wonderful, attentive service by men who appear to have been in the business for years and a head waiter/maitre'd who reminds me of some of the characters in stereotypical mafia films.

The signature sign on Cheshire Bridge Road.



Mussels appetizer.

For the amount of food you receive, the value is outstanding. Although I did not photograph the buttery garlic bread or the pickled vegetables that are brought out to every table, they were both delicious, the veggies very nostalgic and the bread great for sopping up all the delicious sauces presented throughout the meal - I think we ate four baskets! The above-pictured mussels are listed in the "Zuppe" section and do contain a delicious white wine/garlic broth that can be eaten as soup after consuming the delicious mollusks.

For entrees the three of us split two: the linguine pescattore and the veal three ways. Both were outstanding. More yummy sauce to eat with garlic bread!



Padrino (Godfather): veal three ways with spinach.

Very Belated Birthday Post

Fruit tart from my lovely cousins - yum!

For my most recent birthday we ventured to Cobb County for a performace at the Cobb Energy Center. Before the show, Calvin researched and found a nearby Italian restaurant - Taverna Fiorentina - for us to try for my birthday. The space is small , which I liked although too many of the tables are near the kitchen, adding to the noise and decreasing the intimate ambiance. The service, although a bit slow (they were pretty full that night) was decent. The food we tried was a mixed bag. I loved the Caesar salad and the pasta and risotto dishes were tasty but the food felt heavier than it should have. I liked the grilled squid a lot but there wasn't much squid on the plate! The scallops were cooked perfectly and not overdone, which always makes me smile. I would like to give this place another try in order to taste more dishes from their menu. Unfortunately since there are so many new places to try, it might be awhile before that happens.

Seafood mushroom pasta.


Grilled squid with fruit jelly.

Stellar Caesar salad.

Risotto with Scallops.

Italian rice pudding.

NYC: Lattanzi Italian Ristorante

I'm nearing the end of the belated New York posts (one more!) and then we'll go to a few cooking posts and some more recent Atlanta and Charlotte eats. One day we bought half price tickets to In The Heights - at that time starring Jordin Sparks - and had some tasty dim sum (sorry no photos!) in Chinatown. Although the dim sum was tasty, it was not really better than what we have in Atlanta and definitely not good enough to make me want to wait an hour again! We did get to see my cousin Jason (yay) so that was fun and afterwards we walked through Washington Square Park, always interesting to see the street performers.

Later, before the show we headed to Lattanzi Italian Ristorante for some Italian goodness. The restaurant is downstairs, somewhat underground in the theater district. The ambiance is nice, not too loud with significant lighting and chandeliers. I enjoyed our meal but was a bit disappointed overall. Based on the reviews it sounded like this place would be outstanding and very memorable. I can't really remember much about the food so that is not a good sign! In any event, we enjoyed another meal with our wonderful hosts and had a great time at the show!

Arugula salad.

Pasta with white clam sauce.

Mushroom Ravioli.

Seafood Risotto.

Pasta with meat sauce.

Light cheesecake - with too much light!!