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| - Cherry Blossom Café
I'm sure the French have a good word for it, I know I don't other than the expression, "mom-and-pop". This place is a real find! A real one-of-kind mom-and-pop! I didn't meet the owner/operator but I bet my last nickel there is one.
How did we find this joint? Well, every time we drive east past the area of Camelback and say, Central through 7th St., you pass Oregano's, whose consistently, quality and service are days gone by -- long gone. (This last time I visited Oregano's, about three weeks ago, the three-card-Monty-like bartender gave me the willies. And it took 40 minutes to get a roast beef sandwich--that's a serve-up item, bing-bang-boom,dine! No, 40 minutes! I mean what the fudge? They weren't cooking the beef while I was waiting!)
And every time I pass the little shopping center, same north side of the street as Oregano's, probably 3rd Street (there's a Domino's there), I always notice the Cherryblossom Noodle Café and think, "I gotta try that place". Well, we did, that was Christmas Eve.
The menu is Asian and Italian. Now, sometimes that's the kiss of death - two cuisines - but sometimes it's just a fork in the culinary road. It was so good I cannot wait to try other things!
We ordered 1) penne with a spicy marinara that was served perfectly hot, perfectly sautéed. Funny, it seems so obvious and so simple and yet it's been 100 years since anybody prepared me a simple dish so well.
I can tell you this: read my review of DeFalco's Italian Deli -- it's stellar. I love DeFalco's! But I've had spaghetti at DeFalco's 30 times and if you combined the heat of all 30 dishes it wouldn't equal how steaming and wonderfully hot this pasta was. Incredible flavor and preparation.
We took a chance and ordered the Chicken Marsala. I say take a chance because I've really had some bad representations of Chicken marsala lately, most notably Olive Garden (horrible flavor, chicken quality, too was sub -par. Flavor was just amateurish. I know, I know, it's Olive Garden! But Olive Garden isn't giving anything away! That Marsala was $16 bucks!)
See The Cherryblossom Noodle Cafe's very accurate description of the Marsala: "chicken breast, fresh spinach and spinach pasta with a creamy Marsala wine sauce".
Now, imagine that dish arriving at your table steaming hot, so delicious, so very fresh. While more "creamy" than "Marsala", definitely more creamy than I imagined...it wasn't at all what I imagined -- and still it was freaking DELICIOUS. And the menu description was -- IS -- quite accurate.
If not "elegant", a word that comes to mind, I would add "professional". The folks here know what they're doing.
They offer great food, priced right, gracious service, are there 6 stars?
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