[Edit - 12/4/08 - Taste of Italy is now closed. A new restaurant called "Valentino's" is set to open early next year in its place.]
A few days ago our department had our yearly planning meeting. For lunch, we chose a place nearby and here it is: Taste of Italy in Eastlake, although it's not really in Eastlake, but rather, in Otay Ranch. It's located on East Palomar Street near Le Media drive. They have other locations (one's in Hillcrest and another in Rancho San Diego) in San Diego as well.
This was only my second time there.
They also claim to have your lunch special ready in 30 minutes. Didn't happen.
It's still nice and new. The service was okay but one of the waiters didn't speak English. He didn't seem to understand me when I asked him a question. He never got back to me and I had to ask another worker.
I didn't really take a lot of photos because, with my co-workers, I get enough comments about my quirkiness and food-blogging isn't something they seem to be into. The secretary of our department saw an item that intrigued her (I also saw it) so be both decided to try it. Screw the $6.95 lunch special. We got the Carciofi (which I found out later from Lotus, means 'artichoke' in Eye-talian), $14.95. I knew I wasn't going to finish the portion since it was so big; I ended up boxing it and TC finished it off that night. You could order this dish with any type of pasta, so I chose linguine while my co-worker chose angel hair. The photo below is mine (linguine). The dish consisted of artichoke hearts sauteed in olive oil, dressed with fresh chopped tomatoes and basil in a light lemon chardonnay cream sauce and parmesan cheese. You could pay extra to have chicken, shrimp or whatever in your dish, but I had mine plain. I really liked the sauce - quite light; you could taste the flavors of the other ingredients. This dish would taste reallly good with shrimp but I didn't want to pay an extra $5 for that. The noodles were done just right too!
I'd go again with Bert to try something else. Nice to know there's a decent (but kinda pricey) Italian option near our place. I'm still thinking about that pizza crust at Bacione...
This was only my second time there.
They also claim to have your lunch special ready in 30 minutes. Didn't happen.
It's still nice and new. The service was okay but one of the waiters didn't speak English. He didn't seem to understand me when I asked him a question. He never got back to me and I had to ask another worker.I didn't really take a lot of photos because, with my co-workers, I get enough comments about my quirkiness and food-blogging isn't something they seem to be into. The secretary of our department saw an item that intrigued her (I also saw it) so be both decided to try it. Screw the $6.95 lunch special. We got the Carciofi (which I found out later from Lotus, means 'artichoke' in Eye-talian), $14.95. I knew I wasn't going to finish the portion since it was so big; I ended up boxing it and TC finished it off that night. You could order this dish with any type of pasta, so I chose linguine while my co-worker chose angel hair. The photo below is mine (linguine). The dish consisted of artichoke hearts sauteed in olive oil, dressed with fresh chopped tomatoes and basil in a light lemon chardonnay cream sauce and parmesan cheese. You could pay extra to have chicken, shrimp or whatever in your dish, but I had mine plain. I really liked the sauce - quite light; you could taste the flavors of the other ingredients. This dish would taste reallly good with shrimp but I didn't want to pay an extra $5 for that. The noodles were done just right too!
I'd go again with Bert to try something else. Nice to know there's a decent (but kinda pricey) Italian option near our place. I'm still thinking about that pizza crust at Bacione...
1 comment:
We get their flyer and coupons every week and all looks good, but we haven't had a chance to try them yet.
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