You're Gonna Wanna Go to Lackawanna....for meatballs

Living in the south, I've struggled to find good Italian food.  When I lived back north, great Italian places were on nearly every block.  I was spoiled when I lived in North Buffalo, which is the section of the city where Italian immigrants settled.  There were great little Italian places, so it was a luxury to have to pick and choose.  So when I travel back to my hometown for a weekend, Italian food is usually in the mix of my self-induced 72 hour food coma.

Back in Raleigh, one night while watching TV, MM and I flipped over to Food Network and all we see is a huge piece of lasagna and a huge meatball at the Mulberry Italian Ristorante.  Our mouths watered instantly.  Where in this great country could we get this lasagna and meatball?  We hit the info button on the TV, and it simply says New York.  We assume that it's somewhere downstate near New York City (sidebar: Buffalo is not close to NYC - about 8 hours...I lived closer to the City when I lived in Virginia.)  When I pull up the website to get the address, I'm amazed.  It's in Lackawanna, NY.  LACKAWANNA?

Lackawanna, NY is an immediate southern suburb of Buffalo, which is a blue-collar town with a Ford plant and old steel mills, so hearing there is a culinary gem in there is quite surprising. The restaurant opened back in 2005 and changed to an Italian format a year later. So on my most recent trip back home, I was tasked with choosing where to go for family dinner.  No question - I needed to try this place.  Fortunately, my family had dined here before, but was limited on the menu since it was lent (no meat), so they were as excited as me.

We navigate through a quaint neighborhood that runs up against one of the old steel mills (coincidentally, one of my good friends grew up in that neighborhood) and we find Mulberry -  a little corner restaurant with a black awning.  We head in and the restaurant is long and narrow, with some old Yankee Stadium chairs as a waiting area.  The walls are painted a deep red, covered in pictures of the Rat Pack, New York City, and New York and Buffalo sports memorabilia.

The menu has an ample selection of Italian favorites - pasta, chicken, eggplant.  The lasagna is their speciality - the beautiful thing about it is that it changes daily.  The night we were in there, it was a 3 meat lasagna, made with beef, shredded pork and italian sausage.  My sister and her fiancee were both set on getting that, so I knew I could snatch a bite of the house specialty. But I wanted the other house specialty - the meatball.  

The meatball comes with select entrees or can be an appetizer.  Right - one meatball as an appetizer.  So I choose for my entree the Gnocchi di Ricotta Fatto in Casa - homemade ricotta filled gnocchi, which comes with the meatball.  The soup of the day is a Banana Pepper Bisque, which sounds amazing, so I have to partake in that as well.

The soup had more heat than I was expecting, but it is served with a piece of fresh bread, that helped cut the heat.  Super creamy and super flavorful.  But this still did not prepare me for my entree....when it arrives, I'm amazed at the size of the meatball.  It's the size of my fist!

The meatball is huge and packed with great flavor.  But the gnocchi was easily the best I've ever had.  Usually gnocchi is rather dense, but each dumpling was so light and the ricotta was so incredibly fresh.  Simply to die for.  I flew back to Raleigh the next day, and brought my leftovers home with me so MM (who is Sicilian and picky on his Italian) could try, and I received these two texts:

"I had the gnocchi.  Oh Dear."

"That meatball is not fair."

My sister and her fiancee get the full size portion lasagna (mainly so he could have leftover lasagna for lunch the next day...), and blown away at the size - a full size portion is easily 3-4 portions anywhere else.

I'm not a huge meat lasagna fan, but I really enjoyed this, especially the shredded pork inside, since it's a texture not usually seen in lasagnas.  The cheese again was so light and fluffy that this didn't seem like a weight in your stomach. My sister barely put a dent in this, much to the delight of her fiancee, since he was the benefactor of lunch the second day.

I did save room for dessert, since my sister's fiancee talked about the cannolis all weekend.  The standard cannoli has a citrus ricotta filling, but I opted for the nutella cannoli, topped with pistachios.  Simply heavenly.    When you reach the bottom of your dessert plate (after you've licked it clean), the proprietors' humor comes out with a message on the plate.

The only big mistake with Mulberry is that I hadn't been there sooner.  MM is already planning his trip back home to drive to Lackawanna.  There was a jingle back in the 80's for (from what I can remember) a furniture store that said "you're gonna wanna come to Lackawanna....", and you definitely will want to come again and again for an amazing meal.

Mulberry Italian Ristorante

64 Jackson Street

Lackawanna NY 14218

www.worldfamouslasagna.com

Lent and a Boatful of Sushi

As a catholic, I spend 8 Fridays a year observing the lenten obligation abstaining from eating meat.  As a person who loves a good ham sandwich or a nice juicy steak, this isn't the easiest to accomplish, since I always crave a meat product on these select Fridays.  It's like wanting Chick-Fil-A on a Sunday.  But, there is one thing that helps this catholic get through this - sushi.

I had sushi for the first time 10 years ago while on my honeymoon.  MM and I found a place in San Francisco. I was skeptical, but he said "don't worry, it's OK.  The Montreal Expos are here." Sure enough, while they were in town playing the Giants, Bartolo Colon and a couple other players were eating at the sushi bar.  We ordered mostly cooked items, since I still was unsure.  One thing we ordered was deep fried prawns.  The sushi chef asked me "how you want the head - raw or fried?"  My response? "No."  Well, he didn't like that answer, so my logic was "everything is good deep fried, so I just humored him and said fried.  I ate it, MM didn't.  But what we had was so good and fresh, I was hooked.

A couple years later while living in Richmond, we found a place close to our house that had 1/2 price rolls each night, so we would go every Friday night, get a couple rolls, a Kirin Light, and the bill barely made $30.  It was awesome.  They knew MM since he always asked for Srichacha sauce (the hot sauce with the rooster on it), so he was dubbed Mr. Spicy.  We were brokenhearted when arrived one night saying they were closing on Sunday, as they had sold to a new owner.  The new place, called Ichiban was just as good, if not better, since Sue (the owner) made her own spring rolls that were to die for.  She was so successful she opened a second restaurant called Umi in the high traffic, high rent Short Pump area which at last check, was named as one of Richmond's 25 best restaurants.

In Raleigh, we are very fortunate to have found 3 places all within a few miles of our house all that serve amazing sushi, so we just have to decide which one to hit up.  This Friday, we hit up Sushi Thai right before closing.  Even as we were probably the last customers of the night, everything came out super fresh and delicious.  And there is something about when your food comes out on a boat....

MM is a spicy tuna guy (see Mr. Spicy above), and I like Philadelphia or Bagel rolls, since I love the play on textures with the cream cheese.  My new favorite at Sushi Thai is the Florida Roll - spicy tuna and batter served inside out (rice outside) with avocado and Srichacha on top.  The avocado cools the Srichacha, and the tuna has just a bit of texture.  Oh, and did I mention their rolls were buy one get one free?  There are two locations (which supposedly are not related - they just have the same name.  This one is in Raleigh, but the one in Cary is allegedly even better.)

Other places we like are Waraji, where you can dine a a true Japanese-style table with pillows and no shoes, and they have a secret menu, like their crack rolls - a cone style roll with spicy tuna and avocado.  The other is Haru Sushi, which is tucked in the back of a shopping center (actually next store to the previously blogged  Glenwood Grill), where they have great sashimi, like fatty white tuna.

Lent makes our trips to the sushi bar a little more frequent, but give me a boatful of sushi any day, and I'm one happy girl.

Sushi Thai

2434 Wycliff Road

Raleigh NC 27613

sushithairaleigh.com

Waraji

5910 Duraleigh Road

Raleigh NC 27612

warajirestaurant.com

Haru Sushi

2603 Glenwood Avenue

Raleigh NC 27608

harusushiusa.com