It pleases me
Written: Feb 02 '00 (Updated Feb 04 '00)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Excellent food, fabulous desserts
Cons: Royal pain in the patoot to get a table on weekends or busy weeknights
|
|
|
| Chuq's Full Review: Mi Piace |
Is Mi Piace THE most popular restaurant in Pasadena? Sure seems so, particularly on a Saturday night.
It's gotten to be rather difficult to get a table here due to the restaurant's enormous popularity, which is both a blessing and a curse. Granted, the food is good. It's quite good, in fact; reliable, consistent, and it gets you back to the restaurant again and again ... if you can get in, that is.
Mi Piace means "I like it", or "it pleases me" in Italian, and while you'll probably say it about the food, you might not be so pleased with the hassles of getting seated when it's hoppin' in Old Town. While I encourage you to try Mi Piace, you'd be better off avoiding it like the veritable plague on weekend nights.
Once you're seated at your table, however, you'll have a wide range of soups, salads, pastas and specials to choose from. Among the pastas, my favorites are the simple but elegant spaghetti with caramelized garlic, which has nothing more -- and needs nothing more -- than a little crushed pepper, Italian parsley and extra-virgin olive oil to dress the pasta. This is an excellent example of the alchemy of cooking, and particularly Italian cooking: five simple ingredients making a dish greater than the sum of its parts. I'm also fond of the orecchiete with ginger cream sauce (although I'm not sure it's still on the menu). My friend Mark also swears by the Chicken and Cilantro Lasagna, napped with roasted red bell pepper sauce. I'm a believer in sampling new dishes when I can, but Mark thinks that if you find a dish you really love, you stick with it. This is a good one to stick with.
More often than not, though, I find myself going for the specials, both for the starter and the entree. It's here that the chef indulges himself, straying from true Italian cuisine into realms of creativity that I almost always find delightful. Do yourself a favor and indulge yourself with the specials -- trust the chef, he'll do right by you.
Then there are the desserts ... madonn', the desserts! Sometimes I think this is the best reason to dine at Mi Piace. I'd go there just for dessert, if that weren't ... well, impossible unless you go very late. My very favorite is the Chocolate Duo, which is really more like a trio -- dark chocolate filled with layered chocolate mousses, and white chocolate as well. I also love the key lime tart, the hazelnut cake with cappuccino mousse, their excellent tiramisú, and the Mi Piace Special -- pistachio cake between layers of chocolate and raspberry mousse.
They don't take reservations for small parties, but you should be able to reserve a table if you call early enough, and have at least six people. Of course, this doesn't mean you won't wait; you probably will still have to wait. It's worth it occasionally, but despite the quality of the food I have to shave points off the place for how much of a pain it is to get a table unless you plan well in advance.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
Chuq
|
|
Member: Chuck Taggart
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Reviews written: 29
Trusted by: 81 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.