Restaurant reviews

We've (or just I, in one case) have been to a few new (to me) restaurants in the past few weeks that are worth mentioning, so here they are:

The Happy Sumo (Provo)

I went here last week with a vendor for work. They want us to do a reference call to help them sell their product. I'm pretty sure that was the reason for the lunch. (They dropped the reference call possibility on us on the way back, and talked about setting up another lunch for the reference call. I'm ok with getting two lunches out of sharing my opinions. The opinions are normally free anyway.)

Anyway, there were five of us (three were the vendor), and one didn't eat any sushi, but it didn't stop them from ordering 6 sushi rolls. That was a lot of sushi. It was good, but it was a lot of sushi. I used the terms "post-sushi disorder" and "wasabi overload syndrome" on my twitter feed later in the day.

My favorite was the "frida roll" - inari (not really sure what that is), cilantro, red pepper, avocado, that sort of thing. It had a little spice to it, before you added wasabi.

If I ever go back, I think I would like to try what Karl had, a Katzu chicken plate. It looked pretty good.

Thai Village - Provo

This is a restaurant that just opened last week on University avenue in Provo, where Lon's Cooking Shack used to be. Tara's on a Thai kick, which is just fine, except coconut milk kind of upsets my stomach, so when we go to a Thai restaurant, I kind of have to be careful.

Anyway, why not try the brand new place? We almost didn't go in. The place looks incredibly dark from the outside. It turns out that the restaurant is not that dark on the inside, but they had some sort of light brown tinting put on their windows for some reason.

We tried their 'fresh roll', an appetizer wrapped in rice paper. I have say, it wasn't as good as the one at Thai Mango, also in Provo, that we tried months ago. This one seemed to be mostly lettuce on the inside. Maybe the sauce they bring with it is supposed to improve it, but I passed on the sauce, because I suspected it was a sweet sauce.

Tara just the red curry bowl. When it came out, it was enough rice and curry to feed Tara and several of our children. The children were not with us, so Tara took the rest home.

I got the beef waterfall, two star spicy. It was just the right amount of spicy, and was a pretty good dish. They had some sort of crunchy rice bits in with the beef, which gave it an interesting texture.

Overall, it seemed to be a pretty nice place. Hopefully they can stay in business, they basically gutted the place that was there to remodel for this one. I wonder about the new restaurants that spend so much money to get started, and wonder of the owners have unrealistic expectations about their ability to turn a profit quickly...

La Dolce Vida - Provo

Tucked away just off University in Provo is a little Italian restaurant that's been around for 25 years. We've had people over the years tell us to try it, but it's back behind things, and it's got kind of an 'out of sight, out of mind' thing going on. We almost went several years ago, but for some reason on that day, they were closed. The place looks like a store front restaurant from the street, we were a little surprised at how many tables it had in it when we got in there.

I ended up walking by the kitchen to use the restroom while we were there. In the back was a little old lady making the food. I think they were speaking to her in Italian, but I'm not that good. On the back counter were about a dozen loaves of bread, baked and resting before someone sliced them to serve.

I ordered the potato gnocchi. I had never had gnocchi before, but I've always liked the name. I'm sure it means something like 'dumpling' or something in Italian, but I don't know. All I know is that I liked the thing. My gnocchi came on a platter with both white and red sauces, the sauces were one the plate with a perfectly straight line separating the sauces. It was a pretty impressive thing to see. I have no idea how they got the sauces to stay straight like that.

Anyway, my meal was a good one, I may have to try making gnocchi one of these days. It doesn't sound all that hard, really. Maybe they use pastry bags or something to get the sauce to do that.

Additionally, I think I would prefer to go back to La Dolce Vida well before I go back to Gloria's Little Italy, which is on the same block, but facing the main street. The food is better at La Dolce Vida, the restaurant is not as stuffy, and it just seems to be a nice place. I don't know. The food seemed to be a bit better, overall, I thought.