A real restaurant.
Dario's Brick Oven Ristorante.
In the old Bank of America building across the street from the North Middlesex Savings Bank.
Apparently it's the second one. There's another over in Lunenberg or Leominster or some other "L" town.
I have issues with the sign design, but again, I'm sure it's just me. (And anyone else with a sense of design.)
Mom treated us all last week for dinner.
The place has had a full parking lot ever since it opened. They also serve lunch.
Herewith is my review:
Our waitress, Lisa, was nice and really made up for all of the deficiencies.
The bread was served with both butter and olive oil. The butter wasn't cold, and I like ice cold butter with my bread. And the bread, although seemingly homemade in appearance and texture, wasn't warm, and seemed stale-ish. (Tasted good, but still. It seemed like yesterday's bread. Heather would not have been amused.)
The glasses of water were pretty much huge. Not quite enough ice for my liking but that's a minor issue. A plate of sliced, fresh lemons came with the water. I like that rather than floating in the water.
The food pretty much all arrived close to the same time. Mom had ordered a Minestrone soup, in her never ending quest to find one she likes as well as the one from the Italian Villa in Salinas, California, 35 years ago. She said it was pretty tasty. I didn't try it. She had a tossed salad with it. The salad bowl was not chilled and the salad wasn't ice cold. And they forgot to send the dressing with it.
Others in our party ordered a "Brazilia" pizza. They were surprised to find it was slathered in a Tobasco like Sauce. And it didn't have the pineapple on it, it was supposed to have. They questioned Lisa about it, and she checkd it out only to find, it turns out it was the wrong pizza! Lisa boxed it up for them to take home, while they made up the right one! (The right pizza was quite tasty. Thin crust.)
They got points for the serving gadget though! The pizza was served on a cool zig-zag pizza server. If you look at it on edge it is shaped like a "Z." So half of the pizza is on the top part and the other half on the bottom part. It takes up a lot less space than a big round pizza pan, and works great in a small restaurant with limited room. (Like this one.)
My wife had a Lasagna. More than enough for two. Tasted fine. No complaints.
I had a simple Linguini with Marinara. I went nuts and at Lisa's suggestion tried one of "Grandma's" original recipe meatballs. It came with two but Lisa assured me she had checked the bill and I hadn't been charged for two, only one.
It looked good and tasted good. It wasn't as zesty as the marinara over at Filho's in Groton, but tasty. But not hot. Warm enough, but steaming hot as it should have been right out of the kitchen and we were seated something like 15 feet from the kitchen. (Like I said, it's a small place.) The meatballs were almost cold. Barely luke warm. That was a disappointment. The serving was not huge. Don't get me wrong, it was plenty. Any more would have been too much.
So overall, aside from cold, stale bread, warm butter, room-temperature salad, the wrong pizza, and cold meatballs, it wasn't too bad!
Lisa deserves a raise.
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