Casa Bianca

Amanda was told about this place over a year ago by one of her fellow faculty members at school. My friend Bob also sung the praises of Casa Bianca on his blog. Last night Amanda and I were joined by the Duke for an adventure into exotic Eagle Rock to visit Casa Bianca.

What is this place? Its one of those not-so-fine-dining establishments where you will find various beer signs, cheesy maps of Italy, and signed pictures of Ray Romano on the wall. Their menus is pretty basic and you will not find anything terribly unique. HOWEVER, it is soooooooooooooo goooooooooooood. We had the spaghetti carbonara, the spaghetti/spinach ravioli half-and-half, and a pepperoni-mushroom-tomato pizza. The carbonara was pretty good. This isn't a dish that ever has tons of flavor, but they did it well. The spaghetti with red sauce was good because the sauce was good. Its the kind of sauce that you want to make sure you have bread so you don't leave any behind. I really liked the ravioli. Sometimes spinach ravioli can be super watery and flavorless, but these had good texture and flavor. But the pizza was something else. I'm not usually into thin-crust pizza as I was teethed on pizza crusts, but this pizza was awesome. It was cooked exactly right - not too doughy and not burned. There was minimal sauce, but it wasn't dry. Toppings were abundant and the crust was outrageously good.

Good points: delicious food, comfortable setting, you can call in to put your name on the list, $3 corkage for wine, and the people are really friendly, and you could walk about a block down the street to the Chalet for some post-dinner cocktails

Bad points: LONG wait (because it is so popular, but see call-in above), cash only, and the mens'room is really small. If you are over 6-foot, don't plan on taking a dump because you won't be able to squeeze in there.

On a loud-satisfied belch scale of 1-10, I give Casa Bianca 8 stinky tomato-scented belches.