Text 33379, 85 rader
Skriven 2015-11-20 05:24:04 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: puyallup 504
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Toscano's is a regular visit, being the playground of Hap's college friend
Tom
Pantley and the successor of Balsano's, where an echo picnic event had once
been held.

I started out with a wine flight of Washington Cabernets for $14, not a bad
deal when the pours are $25 a bottle and up at the store.

Pendulum Cabernet from Precept was really, really strange. It wasn't corked
but still tasted like all sorts of leaves, from autumn to bay and
everything
in between. The fruit seemed mostly to have fled, and I got notes of root
beer and licorice. I hated it but found it went okay with food. This goes
at 
$12 a glass and is a crummy deal.

Tranche Cabernet was a different story. It was full of menthol and dark
fruits and just about all you'd want from a Cabernet. Huge long minerally
and blackberry finish. The price - $14 a glass. I immediately ordered a
glass. 
Back at home I checked the retail prices. When you can find it, it runs
about 
$37 a bottle, which means that Tom was selling it at approximately 1x
retail. 

Gorman's The Devil You Know Cab-Merlot blend was decent, quaffable, not 
particularly diabolical, though tannic enough. Classic and not memorable, 
though it had almost as many minerals and as much body as the Tranche. It's 
the most expensive on the list, no bargain at $15 a glass.

The special was rolled pork loin stuffed with scallion and regular pestos
over rosemary roasted vegetables. I ordered it, and word came back from the
kitchen that it would take 25 minutes more than the other dishes, so I
said, cook it rare and make it 15. They actually said okay. Well, all the
meals came out at once, and mine was not rare nohow - the piece of meat
had unraveled so it was more like a comma than a roulade, the vegetables
looking like airline vegetables, crusty and shrivelled and sort of random.
If they had warned me that they were giving me the last slice of
yesterday's
I might not have ordered it, but I tried the meat anyhow and discovered
that it was tender, shot with gristle, and absolutely delicious. I have a
hard time sending back something that is delicious. The vegetables were a
loss, but they usually are anyhow. I gave Hap and Annie a couple potato
wedges, ate the snow peas, which are okay when limp, and left all the
rest of the motley assortment.

Annie, who loves sweet things, got orange chicken over penne, which was
not as sweet as she had hoped, though quite orangey. The penne were more
nicely done than Hap's rigatoni, see below. On the whole she liked the
dish a lot.

Hap got sausage riggies, which was fine (I got a piece of sausage, which
was black pepper spicier than your standard Italian, and a riggie, agreed
to have been precooked as a little mushy.

Tom came by twice during the meal and chatted as though he didn't have
anything to do; it was clear he had stuff to do.

We had room for dessert.

Annie ordered blackberry cheesecake, which had a weird hard texture 
but quite authentic New Yorky flavor; she kind of liked it, but Hap 
and I gave the thumbs down;

he got cannoli, which for once in history came as cannoli, i.e., more
than one. These were filled with ricotta, toasted hazelnut halves, and
pieces of fresh fig. Delicious, though I thought the shells a bit hard
- I prefer the dough to be made shorter so the shells are more fragile.

Creme brulee was the usual thing. When it was delivered I told the
server that it wasn't big enough. It was 8" in diameter and the normal
depth. It tasted good, plenty of vanilla, fresh egg taste, no whipped
cream or anything to detract from the shattering topping. There was
plenty to share.

Tom's wife Cindy, who makes the boulangerie-confiserie, came by and asked 
how the cheesecake was. We didn't say anything about the texture but 
complimented the taste. She confided that the secret was Monin syrup and 
also that Tom had made the cannoli filling from an old family recipe from
the south.

The bill was about $55 a person, not outrageous, but nobody did us any
favors.
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