Spizzigo and El Novillo

Playing catch up today at work.  Not on work related tasks, God forbid!  But on my blog.  You can't force these things, you know.

My son, mom and I have been having dinner with the changing cast my uncle drums up for our bi-weekly get togethers for months now, and it's been pretty good - as long as we've stuck to Tutto Pizza.  Our last two get togethers were at Spizzigo and El Novillo respectively and I found our meals there both lame and sad.

Spizzigo is located in a strip mall in Doral (please understand, I dislike Doral and everything in it in an intense and irrational way) which is already a point against the restaurant.  The place is cute, if perhaps a bit cookie cutter and sterile in design.  And freaking cold!  What's with running the A/C at meat locker temperatures?  Eh.  What can I say?  The meal was a disaster from the start.  I'm sure the waiter absolutely hated us.

It seemed that my whole family was in cahoots to be as critical as possible.  We are usually nice!  Really!  I swear!  But...they forgot to get me a wine glass, forgot to bring a place setting for my cousin's wife, they were out of almost every wine my uncle tried to order but two, half the entrees we ordered were cold...the waiters were pretty damn cute, I admit, but sullen and almost rude.  I watched three charming, adorable and admittedly annoying-as-hell little kids try to get a taste of the gelato and the counter guy blew them off completely.  I don't think our waiter even attempted to look pleasant.

My uncle ordered insalata de pere, gorgonzola e noci for everyone as a starter.  The creamy dressing was way too sweet and had no balance and the pears were not ripe.  The bread they brought us was terrible, how do you call the dough part?  The masa?  Not the crust but the...well, you get it, it was all doughy, undercooked, and the crust was dusty with flour and some pathetic herbs...no crunch at all.  It has the texture and edibility of Play Doh.  I ordered spaghetti salmone e limone and the sauce was greasy as hell and with no hint of *limone*.  My mom had some mushroom/spinach tortellini that was so salty.  Absurdly so.  It's like they knew she had high blood pressure and were trying to bring about a speedy demise.  My son's pizza was pretty much ok, and we were all happy to *help* him finish it.  Altogether merda, from start to end.  Maybe gelato would have redeemed it but I think not.  At least we had alchol.  We'll always have alchol.

We had dinner at El Novillo on our previous familial outing.  I've eaten there several times, usually for work, and have found it to be a nice, inoffensive, harmless kind of place where everyone's palate can get along.  BO-RING!  I had skirt steak and it was a bit undercooked, more rare than medium rare, but a little bloody meat never bothered me.  The side dishes are so dull!  They ladle out of a trough some mushy red beans and rice that are just bland, and some maduros that are sliced too thick...honestly, there are few things that annoy me more in life than thickly sliced maduros...the oil doesn't get to the middle and so you don't have the proper ratio of sweet, carmelized outsides to sweet, softened, cooked insides.  It's just dry and raw in the middle.  Caca!  Well, to be fair it was fine.  Honestly. It's like eating at your grandma's house, but not the good cook, the other one.  It's hard to ruin this type of food but it's easy to find it prepared with indifference.  I'm too picky about Hispanic food to deal with these generic, substandard meals.  You got to put some love into it, damn it!  And, of course, pour the wine liberally.  I've firmly established myself as the family alchy, and I'm ok with that.