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| - Nonno's is my placeholder un-fussy Italian place near my house. It's...ok. Sometimes we want some takeout Italian and this usually scratches the itch, although never really excites me. It's not knock-your-socks-off good but it does the trick when craving a basic Italian meal.
The people who own this place used to operate it as a Mexican restaurant, but decided at some point to switch to Italian. Since they used to work at Tutto Pasta, it's basically the same menu as Tutto Pasta. They still have a lot of the Mexican decor from its previous incarnation, which with the stucco and tiled roof stuff could also be interpreted as "Italian," but then you've got Mexican beer neon signs in the windows and Mexican music on the stereo. I choose to enjoy this little quirk.
Anyway, this is a placeholder because what I really want is a local mom-n-pop red sauce Italian joint, with big portions, where I can get takeout and bring it home and eat like half of my entree and have a bunch of leftovers to snack on at 1 am, and Nonno's doesn't quite do that.
They mess with basic recipes by adding a bunch of dairy where it shouldn't be, or trying to turn stuff like chicken marsala into an entree by serving it with potatoes and veggies instead of over pasta. I want red sauce or pesto that's not been messed up with a bunch of cream, I want penne with sausage and peppers without a bunch of ricotta added for no good reason, and all I want with my chicken parm is a big slab of breaded chicken over spaghetti with a bunch of red sauce and cheese on top.
Cafe La Bellitalia over on the east side really is more of what I have in mind, but for me as a southwest-sider it's not quite a convenient takeout joint.
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