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| - When you have grown up loving and appreciating food, and have travelled extensively here in the U.S. as well as abroad, and wanted to dedicate your life to the creative process of preparing food at an early age, and already having lived many decades, it came as a wonderful shock to be so impressed and taken with a local restaurant after eating there for the first time!
My daughter and son-in-law gave us a gift certificate last Christmas for Marcellino Restorante located in Scottsdale, which was about to expire on June 21st. Couldn't let that happen, so the wife and I decided to go on a Saturday to avoid evening rush hour traffic. After reading many reviews on Yelp, and in the AZ Republic, I knew it was considered a very good choice for an Italian meal. Well I have to say it was a very good choice no matter what the cuisine! During the 48 hour period after we ate there, we constantly had thoughts during the day and dreams during the night about how tasty and wonderful the food was. We don't think this has ever happened to us before.
The restaurant was classy, attractive and comfortable, the wait staff friendly, knowledgable and efficient, not at all stuffy or obtrusive. I enjoyed the double layer of linen tablecloths adorning our table. We ordered their special blend of iced tea, a black tea with lavender, apricot and rose hips, unusally tasty, an uncommon occurance in my experience. I should have known if I liked the tea so much, the rest had to be exceptional, and it was! Since their pasta had received rave reviews, and they bothered to bring a large platter of uncooked pastas to the table like many restaurants show off their desserts, we knew we were in for a treat. We decided to order two pasta dishes, Gnocchi Sorrentina (described on the menu as "perfectly light potato/pasta dumplings floating in tomato sauce with fresh mozzarella cheese melting within", and Tagliolini Mare e Monte (the tomato sauce had small shrimp, tail on, and mixed mushrooms, with lovely little chunks of tomato). We told our waiter that we were intending to share the dishes and he brought them out with one half of each pasta dish on our plates, pre-shared you might say. There was an unbeliveable explosion of flavors in our mouths, the pasta cooked perfectly al dente. We were like two little kids in a candy store, oohing and aahing as we cleaned our plates. Next followed our one shared entree, Salmone in Crosta di Porcini e Porri, described on the menu as "Atlantic salmon dipped in porcini (mushroom) flour and sauted with fresh leeks and cognac". Ordered slightly beyond medium, the fish couldn't have been cooked any more perfect! I am drooling as I write this review, I can't help myself. The fish was served with semi crunchy sticks of zucchini and fluffy mashed potatos with a little branch of fresh rosemary sticking up like a miniature tree. We continued to hum throughout this meal. To finish this gastronomic orgasm I had a double decaf expresso and the wife had their blend of decaf coffee and our dessert choice, a chocolate mousse with fresh strawberries topped with whipped cream. It was unbelievable how each plate outdid the next!
Chef Marcellino Verzino greeted us as we were leaving and I told him he was a "flavor magician" whose magic will be long remembered. Until you have eaten here, you haven't really eaten "real Italian pasta"!
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