For April's family dinner out, I suggested to try the Casa Roma, just down the road. We live 5-minutes away, and have driven past this place a million times, but have never tasted the food there. And since one of Fuzzy and my death-row meals is pizza and wine, we were really looking forward to it.
Our previous pizza haunt was a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant at Buona Vista. Fuzzy and I shared many a pizza there when I was expecting Chubbs. It has unfortunately moved to (literally) greener pastures, beside Colbar at Portsdown. That departure upset us greatly and we've been on the lookout for a good pizzeria since. We usually make our own at home (Fuzzy kneads the perfect dough), but after Chubbs' arrival, finding the time for homemade pizza nirvana has been trying. We like Valentino, but reservations are hard to get, there are two seatings per evening (so you either eat late or feel the need to rush), and the prices are a tad steep for it to qualify as a weekly joint. We were hoping Casa Roma would be the anti-dote for whenever a pizza craving strikes.
I like my pizza simple, with one or two toppings, besides cheese. My favourite is the classic buffalo mozzarella, sliced tomatoes and fresh basil. Fuzzy's pizza of choice is an acquired blend of anchovies, pineapple and mozzarella. Sounds bizarre, but it works! Casa Roma didn't offer either, so we settled for the next best thing, Quattro Formaggi. It was a decent pizza, with a thin, crisp crust and a heavy-handed scatter of cheeses. I detected gorgonzola, mozzarella, probably parmesan and some other melty cheese. Delicious!
Together with the pizza, Fuzzy ordered mushroom soup, which was nothing out of this world. I picked a salad of rocket, semi-dried tomatoes, fresh tomatoes, mushrooms and parmesan. It was a substantial serving of lovely, crisp, and well-dressed leaves. The other thing we liked was that Casa Roma serves President butter with the bread basket. We love French butter! We also had our usual order of wine, which was a special house-pour red that was not on the menu. It was delicious and went very well with the food. Unfortunately, being not able to understand our waiter, we could not make out what wine it was, despite him repeating trice.
The only disappointment came with the desserts. With only a handful of options, you'd expect each dessert to be fantastically done. We chose tiramisu, and creme caramel (one of our all-time favs) because we thought no Italian restaurant should get these two wrong. Fuzzy very lovingly remarked that I make better tiramisu (thank you, Love) and there was RESISTENCE when we cut into the creme caramel. A BIG no-no! Creme caramel should be wobbly, smooth, melting and completely succumb to the steel of the spoon. Enough said. I shall ramble no further.
Chubbs fell asleep just before we left the house. So he slept in his car seat until we were halfway done with the pizza. When he woke up, he was happy to play with his teether in the seat for a while but got restless just before the sweets arrived. Sitting on my lap, he entertained the Japanese couple beside us and played with my watch as we finished up and prepared to leave.
We will be back for more pizza!
