Piazza Bella

Continuing on with my sister's visit...

While shopping downtown Mr. Sister said she wanted Italian for dinner.  I mentioned that I had a $25 Restaurant.com gift certificate for Piazza Bella, which is my family's to-go Italian spot when they visit.  For a brief second we contemplated trying something new (I'd really wanted to take her to Guiliana and Bill Rancic's RPM Italian downtown, but even 10 days prior to her visit it was booked up for the weekend.  You can make reservations on opentable.com), but then there was the concern that we wouldn't like wherever we'd end up so we agreed on Piazza Bella.

We had a 7:45pm reservation and surprisingly the place was only about half filled.  (The one negative thing about the space is that it gets very loud very quick; terrible acoustics).  As always, we were craving wine and bruschetta.  Both of which are delicious there! (I get the house cabernet; I am going to pursue buying a bottle or two for the apartment)

Mr Sister



Moi!

(Like our Dior makeovers?)

We ended up splitting bruschetta and also a Cesar salad.  Their Cesar dressing is fantastic and splitting a full salad was the perfect portion.

I had debated on getting their chicken spinach risotto (which is fantastic), but then decided after the starters that I wasn't all that hungry, so we ended up splitting the pennette al brivido (spicy pasta),  which again was the perfect portion.



And, as I was raised to believe, a meal isn't a meal without a dessert.  A fabulous flourless torte:

A tasty meal with great company; and the best part was with tip (and the $25 gift card), the price per person was $37, which included bruschetta, salad, entree, two glasses of wine (each) and dessert!