review: calzone from Colombo's Pizza and Pasta

food.  calzone.  by Colombo's Pizza and Pasta

$6.95 gets you a calzone with 2 ingredients at Colombo's.  Each extra ingredient is another $0.50.  I got mine with broccoli, black olives, and mushroom.  Its other main ingredients were a cheese filling (mostly ricotta), and a cup of marinara sauce.  I waited about 30 minutes after ordering before I received it - if I decide to eat here again I will probably call in my order and arrive when it is almost ready instead of waiting at the restaurant for so long.

The visual presentation of the calzone was good.  Scoring the dough was a nice touch, and gave easy access to the interior, which consisted mainly of a ricotta cheese filling.  After opening the calzone up a bit, I poured the cup of marinara sauce over the inside.  The aroma was appetizing, and consisted mainly of ricotta cheese.

I enjoyed this with a Blue Moon: Summer Honey Wheat, a seasonal offering from Blue Moon in Golden, CO.  I felt that the light bodied and smooth wheat beer paired well with the fatty calzone.

The calzone filling was great with the marinara sauce.  It was all very delicious together.  The ingredients were cooked well, and the flavors complimented one another.  Unfortunately, the marinara sauce only lasted until I had eaten roughly half of the calzone.  From that point onward, there was no more sauce.  The calzone was still good, but felt somewhat incomplete without the acidic tomato sauce.

The doughy shell of the calzone was slightly soggy with oil on its underside.  There was a bit of an excess of the dry dough near where it had been pinched together prior to baking, but this is to be expected.  I ate the excess by itself and washed it down with the Blue Moon.  It was alright.  I felt that if I had combined a large chunk of the dough with the filling in my mouth that it would only have detracted from the filling, which is what I was most interested in tasting.

Rating

This would have got a near perfect score if it weren't for the lack of marinara sauce during the later portion of the meal.  Until that point it was satisfying and delicious.  Afterward, the dish was lacking a primary component of flavor that I expect from an italian dish, the tomato.  Colombo's Pizza and Pasta, your calzone has earned 4/5 sprigmeats heads.  I love you meespree.

~swamp

review: Naked Noodle's Zorba the Geek

food.  penne pasta.  by The Naked Noodle, Bozeman MT


Main ingredients: pasta, tomato, artichoke hearts, capers, greek olives, feta cheese and a white wine sauce.

This pasta dish is served hot, is slightly acidic and has a bit of a strange aroma - possibly from some interactions between the capers, olives, and white wine.  The visual presentation of the dish is passable.  I got this in a to go box, so I could not have high expectations for its appearance.

The fruits and vegetables in this dish are fresh and satisfying.  I found the noodles to be a bit too limp for my liking.  When considered independently, the ingredients work well.  But there is something missing.

The noodles are relatively dry as I chew them, and the ingredients feel isolated from one another.  The sauce has been nearly completely divorced from the rest of the dish, and so nothing is trying it together.  The noodles or other ingredients are not coated by the sauce, and this remains true even after mixing.  Even as I deliberately combine the sauce with the noodles and other ingredients in my mouth, it feels as though they do not intermingle.

the sauce sits alone in a pool of its own self loathing

After I had eaten all the solid ingredients, a puddle of sauce remained in my to go box.  I didn't have a spoon or any elegant way to approach drinking the sauce, so I poured the remainder of it into my mouth.  It was decent, although it had cooled by this point.  It was a bit tangy and acidic.  Drinking it was definitely not an unpleasant experience.

Rating

This was an acceptable dish, but I would be unlikely to order it again.  The individual ingredients were satisfying.  The sauce, however, was ineffective.  This resulted in dry noodles and ingredients who could not easily work together to create one flavor shared by the whole of the dish.  Zorba the Geek, you deserve 2.5/5 swampmang heads.  (I'll have to apologize to my friend and fellow blogger, Charles, for stealing this rating system.  But I felt that the heads would be more apt than nipples or horse cocks for this one)