#FoodPornFriday - A chicken, fried bread and pasta monstrosity

Look at this thing. Just look at it. It's insane. This may be the largest thing I've ever featured for #FoodPornFriday 

Last night the family went out for dinner. Our initial plans fell through and we ended up out in the far West side of Windsor. We sat for a bit in a parking lot trying to decide where to go mainly thinking about places on that end of town. We eventually decided on Piccolo's Pizza and Pasta House.

It's been a long time since any of us had been to Piccolo's. I'm pretty sure D was still nursing little G at the time. It is somewhere we used to go now and then when we lived in the west end and somewhere we used to go often when it was The Pizza Merchant. I miss The Pizza Merchant and their all you could eat Pizza Bar. 

Piccolo's is a high end, fancy, Italian restaurant, that probably would fit in better on Erie St. rather than at 2135 Tecumseh Rd. W. They have a fantastic selection of pasta and pasta based dishes as well as Windsor Style Pizza. They make everything to order (including freshly made pasta) and are proud of this fact. You won't get a quick meal here, expect 2 hours (at least) for your dinner if you go to Piccolo's. It's also not cheap, most items on the menu are $19.95 or $25 a serving. They do have a good kids menu (10 and under) that's only $7 a plate.

Now I haven't really been talking about it here but this Big Dude is currently trying to become a Smaller Dude (who still likes food). So I avoided the Pizza. I skipped the Panzerotti. I was tempted by the Stromboni, which is something you can only get here. It's like a panzerotti, it's dough stuffed with pizza toppings that are first fried and then baked. Kind of like a twisted up calzone. It's rather good, but that's not what I ordered. I was trying to be good so I ordered the Cheesy Cheddar Chicken.

The pictures you see here are what showed up. Not at all what I was expecting. I think a Panzerotti would have been smaller and healthier. I couldn't get over how massive this plate of food I was served was.

Here's the description from the menu: "A mound of Cappellini baked on top of Piccolo's fresh fried dough strip covered in cheesy cheddar sauce with strips of sauteed chicken breast smothered in a blend of three cheeses."

Okay maybe I'm not great at making the healthy choices yet :D I did expect it to be somewhat better than double cheese meat pizza.

The image in my mind from that description did not match at all what I was served. I expected some bread, a thin layer of crusty bread, with pasta on it. On the pasta some chicken and on that chicken some cheesy sauce. I was not expecting this burrito-like wrap of fried bread around pasta and chicken soaking in thick sauce. 

There was enough food on my plate to feed all five of us. I ended up bringing most of it home.

#FoodPornFriday Vittorio's Slice of Italy - fantastic Italian if you can find it

Today's #FoodPornFriday post is inspired by a few Facebook and Instagram comments I've gotten over the last few days. 

A few weeks ago my wife and I had plans to go see the new Avengers movie. We wanted to make sure we saw it in the theater and didn't wait for the DVD release. I had the thought that if we went the opening night of Star Wars: Solo then, obviously, Avengers would be empty as everyone would be seeing Solo. It was a good plan. What it was missing though was somewhere to eat before the show. 

Now, I don't remember what else was going on that day but I remember time was tight. We had some stuff to do and then needed to eat pretty quickly and hit the theater or we would miss the start of the show. At this point, Avenger's was only playing at Lakeshore Cinema so I was looking for somewhere to eat either in Tecumseh or on the way. After checking out Google and a few review sites I settled on someplace I've never heard of: Vittorio's Slice of Italy. 

Vittorio's Slice of Italy is a small(ish) family-owned Italian restaurant hidden in Forest Glade. It's hidden so well that it's in plain sight and despite that, I drove past it twice. See, it's in Forest Glad Plaza, and I can already hear you saying: but the only restaurant in that plaza is Parks & Rec. Well, I thought the same thing, and we are both wrong. Vittorio's is almost in the south-west corner. It's right next to a Deli and I have to say their sign somehow makes it look like they are part of the deli. Driving by I actually thought that the deli must sell a lot of Italian meats and bread or something. No, Vittorio's has nothing to do with the Deli (well maybe they get some ingredients there, that wouldn't surprise me). 

So now that you know how to find the place, what can you expect from Vittorio's Slice of Italy? It's not a big place, though bigger than it looks from outside in the plaza. The kitchen is in plain view and as soon as you walk in I can almost guarantee you will be greeted and treated like family by one of the staff. In this way Vitto's reminds me of Louis', they are extremely friendly and welcoming and you will feel right at home in no time. The only complaint I have about the place is that it can get loud. It's basically one room with no walls and depending on how many people are there it can be noisy. 

The big thing food wise at Vittorio's is gourmet pizza. They offer 34 different pre-made pizzas that include #23: Carbonara with mozzarella, eggs, bacon and parmesan, #32: Lenola with mozzarella, porcini mushrooms, and prosciutto, or #15: Jessica's with Tomato sauce, mozzarella, ham, pepperoni, and sausage. These are the pizza's my family has tried so far and every one has been fantastic. 

It's an interesting style of pizza. It's not Windsor Style Pizza. Nor is it wood oven flatbread pizza. It's something in between. The ingredients seem to be the same ones used on most Windsor Style Pizza and the crust is closer to Windsor Style but not as thick. The pies are cooked in a standard pizza oven, so they definitely aren't wood fired. I've heard these are closer to the Italian roots of pizza, but I can't answer to the validity of that.

Vittorio's isn't all pizza either. They also have a decent selection of traditional Italian meals. Gnocchi, Ravioli, Chicken Parm, etc. After our first trip, someone on social media suggested we try the Bruschetta appetizer and we did so on our next trip and that comment was bang on. The best, but also messiest, bruschetta I've had. Overall my wife and I were really impressed. So much so that the next Thursday I took my mom and the kids there. A couple weeks later the entire family went. At this point, I'm sure we will be back again. 

I did forget one thing. We found the prices to be excellent for the portion size. The pizzas range from $8.99 to $13.99 with items like veal parmesan being only $12.99. You don't see those prices at other local Italian restaurants. 

So trust me when I say, there's a damn fine Italian restaurant hidden in Forest Glade and it's well worth going on the hunt to find it.

#SushiSaturday We finally got to try The Dragonfly Sushi Bar

Between having to work afternoon shift and things like getting the kids out to Camp Cedarwin I haven't been free Friday nights. This means I haven't had a chance to do a #FoodPornFriday post for some time. I feel bad about this. So today I present a special #SushiSaturday post featuring some of the most appealing sushi ever.

The Dragonfly Sushi Bar opened up in Windsor quite a while ago. It's a small place located at 1567 Ottawa Street and is very easy to miss if you don't know it's there.

I remember a lot of buzz when it opened. I kept hearing that this was the place to go. That the chef (Shane Cushing) was the best in the city and one of the best sushi chefs in Canada. It seems everyone else heard this too as my wife and I were never able to get in. It doesn't help that they have very limited hours and are very small. Now I realize all I had to do was call ahead and get reservations, but that would require more pre-planning that we usually have when deciding to eat out.

Back on May 25th my wife and I found ourselves kid free and looking for somewhere to eat. I wanted to try somewhere new and headed towards India Paradise, a new Indian place on Ottawa street. On the drive there we passed Dragonfly and I noted that they were open. When we got to India Paradise it looked like they were closed (more about that if I ever post about India Paradise) so we headed back to Dragonfly and actually managed to get in and get a seat.

I'm so glad we got in that day. Dragonfly serves the freshest fish I've ever eaten. The tuna was like butter. It melted in your mouth. I'm not a fan of sashimi (the actual raw fish that many people think all sushi is), but my wife is. She insisted I try her tuna and OMG it was so good. Everything was excellent. We ordered a mix of rolls both ones from the menu and daily specials. I also got a Panko Pork Slider that was also a daily special. That Pork Slider is one of the most delicious things I've ever put in my mouth.

Everything we had was excellent. Ridiculously fresh and well made. I'm not sure how to get across just how special this was. Let's put it this way, I didn't think food could taste this fresh. I've eaten a lot of food. I had a definition of amazing fresh food in my head based on that experience and Dragonfly caused me to raise that bar, to redefine my idea of fresh sushi.

With all that said, this has got to be my favourite sushi place in the city now, right? Surprisingly no. It's up there, way up there, but there were some things that I wasn't a big fan of. The sashimi is amazing, but it's still not the kind of thing I want for a meal. Added to that almost every single roll had shrimp in it, most of it cooked shrimp. I'm not really a shrimp fan and when I do eat it I like it chilled. Now I could tell that it was amazing and perfectly prepared but it wasn't a taste for me. Like when I have a great IPA, I can tell it's a good IPA but I'm still not a fan of IPAs.

Now I'm certain that this is the perfect taste for someone, probably lots of people. You honestly can't get better ingredients or better-prepared sushi anywhere in the city. If you dig shrimp and lots of sesame and crispily fried root vegetables and edge seared eel you are going to love Dragonfly. If you like sushi at all you owe it to yourself to try Dragonfly at least once. For us it's going to be a now and then sushi place. I'm certain sometime in the future my wife or I will get a sushi craving and say: let's go back to The Dragonfly Sushi Bar and when we do I don't expect to be at all disapointed. I just hope they have panko pork sliders as a special that day. 

Mrs. Jones Cafe & Cheesecake Co. it's not just their egg salad that's the best in the city

Photo from windsorite.ca (forgot to take one of my own)

A couple weeks back as part of a #FoodPornFriday post I featured the amazing lunch I had at Mrs. Jones Cafe & Cheescake Co. 

At the time, I noted that Mrs. Jones (no, I'm not typing up the full name every time, I'm sure you know where I'm writing about) really deserved a full blog post. Well here you have that blog post.

Mrs. Jones is a rather small cafe located at 5880 Wyandotte Street East, in the heart of the Olde Riverside neighborhood here in Windsor. By rather small I mean tiny. The entire place only has 7 tables and 2 of those only seat 2 people. While this can be a problem actually getting a seat, it does lend itself to a very private, personal and comfortable atmosphere. 

The front 3/4 of the cafe is where all the seating is with the back 1/4 being the display area for all the tasty treats and the actual kitchen. The kitchen is right out in the open and you can tell Mrs. Jones has nothing to hide. Actually if you need to use the facilities you have to basically walk through the kitchen. This adds to the comfortable homey feeling that surrounds the place. It feels like you are just visiting the Jones house for a meal.

The menu (which doesn't seem to be hosted online anywhere) contains a bunch of comfort food. There's a focus on breakfast and lunch items but they do have a few dinner items as well. Though, if you want to go there for dinner, you will have to eat early as the latest they are open is 4pm. Along with the usual menu items there is always a quiche of the day, a phyllo wrap of the day and at least one soup of the day.

For breakfast I usually do a "make your own" omelet. I don't know what they do at Mrs. Jones that is different from other places but man do they make a good omelet. My personal favourite is mozzarella and crisp bacon.

Lunch is what I really love from Mrs. Jones. They have two special deals: the Mrs. Jones and the Mr. Jones. Both of these are flat priced combos. The Mrs. Jones lets you pick any sandwich, phyllo or quiche and pair it with soup or salad finished off with a fresh baked cookie. For a bit extra you can upgrade that cookie to a piece of cheesecake. The Mr. Jones is similar and I think it includes a pot pie in the combo or maybe a burger. I'm sorry but I don't actually remember and I always personally order a Mrs. Jones. Did I mention I can't find a menu online?

The reason I always order a Mrs. Jones special is because this place has the best egg salad I've ever had. Seriously, this stuff is amazing. It's a lemon dill egg salad which you can get on your choice of bread, toasted or not, with or without lettuce and tomato. I can't get enough of this sandwich. Actually if Mrs. Jones wasn't currently closed I think I know what I would be doing in about an hour from now.

My wife is a huge fan of the phyllo wraps and I can't remember the last time she ordered anything else. Though she does tend to mix up the sides. I've been very tempted to try the pot pies. Every time I see someone else order one they always look so good. But ordering that would mean I miss out on my egg salad.

Okay so all this talk of sandwiches, soups and salads skips over the whole second half of Mrs. Jones Cafe, the Cheesecake Co. part. We've been going to Mrs. Jones for about five years now and you know what? In all that time we never actually tried a piece of cheesecake. Every time we went in and got our Mrs. Jones special we always got a cookie at the end. They were damn good cookies. Sometimes we would save them for the kids but most of the time they got eaten right there. This changed a couple weeks back. The waitress pointed out the ability to upgrade the combo to include a piece of cheesecake. My wife and I debated it for maybe half a second and agreed. I ordered Pumpkin Spice cheesecake and my wife got Teramisu cheesecake.

OMG. Why did we wait five years to try this cheesecake? It was amazing. Really amazing. I never thought anything would top the cheesecake from Ye Olde Steak House but Mrs. Jones did, by far.

Mrs. Jones sells over 100 different kinds of cheesecake. Most of these are made to order but they also have a display set up with a wide variety of styles and types you can order right then and there. In addition to cheesecake they also do a bunch of other confectioneries: cookies, cake pops, muffins etc. Seriously though, skip all that and just get some cheesecake. Don't make the mistake we did and settle for cookies for far too long.

The one thing I haven't mentioned yet is price. This is mainly due to my bad memory and failure to find a menu online. The one thing I know for a fact though is that Mrs. Jones is extremely reasonable. Especially for the quality of food you get. I think the Mrs. Jones special is just under $8 (before cheesecake upgrade) and I think our bill last time we were there was about $28 for the wife and I (and we both did the upgrade). I apologize for not having better numbers on me. I'll try to come back and update this post when we go back there next time.

So overall this little place in Olde Riverside shouldn't be overlooked. It's a fantastic cafe with amazing comfort food and even better cheesecake. The only complaint I have is that it's so small it's sometimes hard to actually get a table.

I drove 45 minutes just to eat at Jack's Gastropub

Hoping to get in at least one more restaurant during Windsor Eat's Winter Bites we headed out to Kingsville, Ontario Saturday to try Jack's Gastropub. Now Kingsville is about a 45 minute drive out of town from where we are, so I doubt this will become a regular trip.

We got into town a little early (on purpose) and stopped in at the Butcher of Kingsville before driving around a bit to find Jack's. For some reason I thought it was located on Main St. when it was actually on Division. No big deal, Kingsville isn't very big at all and it took less than five minutes to find.

Jack's is located in a converted house. There's a small bit of parking outside and it looked like there was an overflow lot as well, but we didn't need it and I didn't think to confirm. A quick walk around the front of the place gave us a good look at a large obviously popular heated patio. It's mid January and the patio was packed, at just after 5pm. Once inside I couldn't help but point out the very cool little bar room off to the right. If I lived in Kingsville I could totally see sitting here drinking some craft beer and catching up on some reading.

We were asked if we had reservations, which surprised me given the time of day. Note to self and anyone reading this: make reservations, even if you think you are coming too early to need them. Thankfully they did have some room for us upstairs. As noted the place is a converted house. Well they didn't convert much at all. It was still very house like upstairs. We walked through an obvious living room, to the back hall, almost to the kitchen, up the stairs, past two bathrooms and into what I guess was at one time a main bedroom. Much of the original fixtures were still there. There were also lots of hats. No clue on this one, I guess someone digs hats. Cool enough.

Bad iPod pic of the Beer Menu

We got a booth seat, noted they have a high chair up here (hey cool this is a place we can bring the kids), and started looking over the menus. Note I said menus, as in plural. No I don't mean mine and my wife's I mean the food menu and the beer menu. That's right Jack's has a beer menu. I didn't think anywhere south of London had a beer menu. Awesome!

What we then realized is that we didn't have a copy of the special Winter Bites menu that brought us here. This was quickly corrected and we ordered. I went with the Pulled Pork Poutine followed by a Farm Burger, which is an all beef burger topped with bacon, goat cheese, onion tanglers and fried egg on a toasted Kaiser. Instead of a third course Jack's continued with the awesome offering up a Beer Tasting Flight.  That's right, instead of desert, you get four beers to try. For my flight of beer I decided to get Walkerville Blonde, Okanagan Springs, Maudit and Dead Elephant IPA. I will admit that I was slightly disappointed that between the bottle list and the craft beers on draft they didn't have anything I haven't tried before, but that is become more and more common as I reach the 700 beer's reviewed mark.

Flight of beers, a beautiful thing.

The beer came very quickly and it was nice to see a waitress point out which were which. I've been to a few places that serve flights that forget that important step. Our first course showed up before I had finished the first glass.

The Poutine was great, probably the best I've ever had. My pulled pork was fantastic and I tried a bite of my wife's Cheeseburger Poutine and it was good as well (though not as good as mine, score). Seriously this stuff is awesome.

Now here comes the one bad experience this whole trip. While about half way through my poutine our mains showed up. Holy cow, talk about fast. At this point we have probably only been at Jacks for 20 minutes. I can't help compare this to the disaster at Crave, this trip is like the complete opposite. Now I'm not happy the second course came out before finishing the first, but really, if it had to happen to any type of food, is it really that bad to get a burger while still eating your fries? I think most of all I just would have liked a breather and time for things to settle and to drink some more of those beers.

My Farm Burger

So that main course, how was it? Fantastic! Truly fantastic. This may be the best burger I've ever had. I'm still on the fence about it. It's most definitely up there with Motorburger. It might actually be better. I think I'm going to have to go back to Motorburger to check.

The picture over there doesn't do this burger justice. It was big, thick and amazing tasting. I couldn't even finish it, which is a rare thing for me (I'm a big dude for a reason). I also have to add, that bowl of coleslaw was great. Why I need to add that. I don't like coleslaw, well most of the time. I hate bitter, pickled tasting slaw. This was not that this was creamy fantastic slaw.

So yeah, this was good. Really good. Remember up top I said that the 45 minute drive meant this won't be a regular trip. I was wrong, totally wrong. Right now I'm sitting here typing this and trying to figure out how I can get back out to Jack's again this coming weekend, or maybe somehow tonight. Anyone know a good sitter?