Moe's Pasta Bowl Gives You Italian for Less Dinero

Author: Dave

Close your eyes. Now, imagine real Italian pasta dishes for $8 an entree. OK. Open your eyes, get in the car and head to Moe's Pasta Bowl Italian Mix. Order the pasta. Wish granted.

On recommendations from friends, we brought the family of four (me, wife Kirsten, The Girl, 8, and The Boy, 4) to Moe's Pasta Bowl on a recent Friday evening. At Moe's, you do the ordering at the counter kinda like fast food ... but your service is more in line with a full-service restaurant. Friendly servers brought out our orders quickly (which wasn't surprising as the the dining area was lightly populated). The food tasted fresh. The atmosphere was pleasant. We liked the warm decor, dominated with hues of gold, but also liked that the dining area is well lit. We could see much of the kitchen, which we always like because you feel like there's nothing to hide. A cute, interesting touch: A large flat-screen TV in the main dining area was tuned to The Food Network, on mute with subtitles. My wife liked that ... she believes it shows that the owner really cares about food. (On this night, in between bites, you could soak up some inspiration courtesy of the Chef Jeff Project.)

Some people might wonder if the restaurant compares with Fazoli's, the fast-food "Italian" chain. We don't see much comparison. Fazoli's is food that anybody can make, given a pulse and a kitchen. Moe's food is closer to what you'd find in a classic Italian restaurant.

If Moe's Pasta Bowl were a rock band, Sauce would be the star lead singer. The pasta was nicely prepared, and so was the protein in our entrees. But, the sauces made the difference.

My Rigatoni and Sausage Classico had some kick, which I love. This dish contains rigatoni pasta, Italian sausage, onions, sweet peppers, basil and feta cheese in a spicy tomato sauce. Friends of mine had described the sauce as "zippy," and that about sums it up. The dish got better and better as I ate. I was left wanting more, which is always a good sign. Fact is, the portion was fine for me, but a little light on the meat ... if you want to beef it up, you might want to order the $2.29 side order of Italian sausage or Italian Meatballs.

Kirsten ordered the Farfalle Pollo, made with bowtie pasta, grilled chicken, sun-dried tomato, mushroom, pine nuts and parmesan cheese in a roasted Alfredo cream sauce. I was reading the other day in National Geographic that archaelogists found evidence of roasted pine nuts in Neanderthal caves 125,000 years ago ... and my wife found evidence during this meal that pine nuts can be just as delightful for modern-day humans. She also liked that the alfredo sauce was on the lighter side ... heavy, rich alfredo sauces tend to weigh you down, and Kirsten finds that heavier alfredo sauce doesn't taste as fresh. Her chief complaint was that a few of the mushroom stalks were "woodsy," and she had to spit them out. Otherwise, the mushrooms were tasty.

We also enjoyed the Caesar salad and its peppery dressing with fresh greens. In a word: Good.

DESSERT: Asked which dessert we'd like, my wife--drunk on her new-found power as a blogger--announced, "We'll take one of each." They cost about $4 each, but seriously ... we rarely do more than polish off one dessert between the four of us.

The canolis looked huge ... Kirsten commented: "I've been all over New York, and I've never seen a canoli that big." Our two canolis came home to our fridge, because we had plenty of cake to eat. The tiramasu was excellent, and the chocolate cake was a moist, satisfying treat that blended well with the scoop of ice cream and slathering of chocolate sauce.

When we got home and finally cut into one of the canolis ... it was extremely tasty and satisfying. This was a hearty filling, not as creamy as other canolis we've had. Kirsten said it has a cream cheese base with confectionary sugar ... and she was close. The norm is ricotta cheese, but owner/head chef Moe Alhussein says he uses marscapone, an Italian cheese similar to cream cheese, but higher-grade. (I will follow up with a special post about Moe and his compelling story.)


THE KIDS: One of the charms (?) of our 4-year-old son is that once you put a fork in his hand and put food under his nose ... he's absolutely unpredictable. There was a time that The Boy ate nothing but chicken ... and now he won't touch the bird, even deep-fried in McBatter. Not even macaroni and cheese is a safe bet for The Boy. He may like it at one place, and barely touch it at another. For the record, The Boy devoured Moe's Penne-Mac and Cheese. Almost ate it all. It's the small victories in life that are important. Mom tasted the mac-and-cheese, and she said it was good. Direct quote: "I'd eat it."

The Girl's palate is less discerning ... it's news when she doesn't like something at all. Did she like Moe's Stuffed Ravioli with Meat Sauce? Well, let me put it this way ... I was about one-fourth the way through my meal when I heard the girl mumble that she didn't get very much. She'd eaten all the ravioli and was begging for some more bread to soak up the sauce. I tasted the sauce ... it was good. (And her portion was fine, trust me. The Girl eats too fast ... a constant struggle.)

I'd give the place 4-1/2 out of 5 spoons in the family-friendly category. My only quibble is that the choices of side for kids are salad, soup or store-bought potato chips. Salad and soup, OK. But, instead of chips, some carrots and ranch dressing or a similar, simple health-conscious alternative would be nice. Many kids would not eat salad or soup.

OVERALL: Moe's Pasta Bowl Italian Mix is a good place for good Italian food at a reasonable price. Parents can find good food, and so can kids.

3-1/2 out of 5 spoons.

SCALE:
5 spoons -- a divine, out-of-body culinary experience
4 spoons -- top-notch establishment
3 spoons -- a good place to eat
2 spoons -- wouldn't recommend
1 spoon -- avoid at all costs

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Black Friday Fondue was quite fun to do

Author: Dave

The day after Thanksgiving, while many other people were whisking themselves from Black Friday sale to Black Friday sale, we were grocery shopping for Fondue Night. My wife and I, looking for a different activity with the kids, thought that we'd try something that was both fun and tasty.

We've never done fondue before ... and I know why. It's not something you just decide to do at the last moment. But, cleaning our basement one morning we came across a couple of fondue sets that Kirsten's Grandma had owned. Next thing you know, we're pining for some fondue-fried fun.

Now, let me warn you: The fondue sets warn against doing this activity with kids. And, that's probably sage advice. Our kids listen to us really well at dinnertime. I wouldn't have done this if they were normally unruly -- and had they become unruly, we would have stopped.

Another warning: Follow all the instruction carefully. Do NOT use food that has a high moisture content -- a point we will be sure to remember next time. At one point, some shrimp popped hot grease on me and The Boy, 4. (We were both fine.) The shrimp just was not dry enough -- we should have patted it down with paper towels some more. That was the end of the kids cooking in hot oil.

We followed a recipe that turned a block of extra sharp cheddar into a melted bowl of extra sharp cheddar. In the other fondue bowl, we heated vegetable oil hot enough for meat ... yes, you can fry meat in oil with fondue, something that a few friends were surprised to hear.

On the menu: An insane amount of food that reflected our excitement more than our actual appetite.

The proteins were beef, bacon-wrapped beef, shrimp, bacon-wrapped shrimp, chicken, and (you guessed it) bacon-wrapped chicken. Oh, yeah. We also dipped Lil' Smokies in the cheese. Let me tell you, I didn't think the beef would be very good ... but I loved it the most. And, I thought my wife went way overkill by involving bacon, but what the heck was I thinking? Bacon's always a great add, and in this case made every meat better. Bacon-wrapped beef flash-fried in oil isn't going to make the ADA's list of heart-healthy alternatives, but it stole my heart during Friday Fondue Night. Kirsten and the kids preferred the shrimp, sans bacon.

To make things even tastier, we had three dipping sauces for the meat ... a choice of Schnuck's Select brand lime-chipotle marinade, Teriyaki sauce and a sweet red chili sauce.

You want to be really careful to cook the chicken and shrimp until done, but generally each of the meats took about a minute per piece to cook. Kirsten cut the shrimp in half and cut the beef and chicken into one-inch by one-inch cubes.

The vegetables were broccoli, cauliflower and zucchini. The zucchini was sliced thin. We also had some fondue fungus with a (mandatory, for us) batch of mushrooms. We either dipped them raw in the cheese, or we covered the zucchini and mushroom in a store-bought batter and fried them. The Girl, 8, and I were crazy for the shrooms after we realized you had to fry them long enough to really brown the batter (about 4 minutes) to fully cook the mushroom. We dipped the batter-fried veggies in Ranch dressing.

Yet another warning: Let each deep-fried food rest for a few minutes before eating them. Don't be a fool like me and try to eat them quickly ... I learned the hard way right off the bat. Fondue isn't as much fun with a burnt tongue.

For the cheese bowl, we had a Schnuck's bakery sourdough bread pulled apart into small pieces and some tasty Snyder's of Hanover pumpernickel onion pretzel sticks. Each went great in the cheese.

We couldn't finish everything, and had to dump the leftover fish and chicken, as well as the cheese. The leftover beef, veggies and bread items were saved for future meals.

We started the meal at 5 p.m. and took 2 hours to finish. It's easy to rush through meals on your way to do some other activity, but the great thing about fondue is that it's an experience that the family can enjoy ... and it forces you to slow down. We plan to do it again, soon ... probably after the holidays. (After skipping Black Friday, we've still got a lot of shopping to do.)