| rev:text
| - Not the place to go if you're looking for Italian. More like the place you go when you are looking for I-talian. And they make some darn good I-talian.
The sauce is light, sweet and chunky. It's closer to a summer tomato sauce than a long-stewed Sicilain "gravy". It is served atop collosal -- bigger than your head mountains of thick spaghetti. Having grown up in a Sicilain neighborhood, I appreciate the deeply rich and complicated sauce more. Their sauce does work really well in their subs and lasagne, though.
Don't order the salad. It is just a pile of iceberg and packaged croutons and it smells like water from old pipes in the middle of summer-- sort of algae-ish. Opt instead for the really tasty soups-- cheddar, onion and a special of the day.
I had the eggplant parm. The thin slices of eggplant were lightly bredded and expertly fried, but covered in mozzerella instead of parmesan. Still good. The lasagne is pure, unadulterated comfort food. Uncomplicated and lovely.
The standout at Stella's is their meatballs. Meatballery is a lost art-- people use too lean a meat, use those awful meatball mixtures, add too much binder, add too little, forget to brown them before adding them to the sauce, add scads of unreconsituted dried oregano. All these things ruin the meatball experience. Stella's meatballs are perfect-- obscenely juicy, flavorful, firm but tender. Perfect!
I haven't had their pizza, but my neighbor swears by it. He swears a lot, though.
|