Weekend Round-up: Le Gallo Rosso and Maido

Le Gallo Rosso
Friday night Neil and I met up with three other friends for dinner at Le Gallo Rosso. There has been quite a bit of buzz surrounding this restaurant but we hadn't tried it yet. What I'd heard and read most frequently about it was that the food is good and reasonably priced, the portions are huge, and diners are permitted to bring their own wine. Sounds good to me!

The restaurant is located in an alley off Bardstown Road, and they've created a lovely patio area that I can't wait to sit in when the weather warms up. There are separate dining rooms in front of and behind the kitchen; we were seated in the small room behind it. The atmosphere was cozy and festive, though the room was a bit chilly at times because of the frequent opening of the door. This seemed to be less of a problem as the evening wore on.

Small loaves of warm Italian bread were brought to the table in baskets and were accompanied by dishes of olive oil and sun-dried tomatoes for dipping. We gobbled this up, and our server brought us more bread several times. Next came the salads; Neil and I both had Caesar salads, which were very good. Two of our tablemates had the house salad, which comes as a bouquet of greens wrapped in a long slice of cucumber; they were very pretty, and I sort of wished that I'd ordered one for aesthetic reasons alone.

Our entrees arrived and were, as promised, huge. I packed up Neil's leftovers for lunch a little while ago and saw that of his two meatballs (which were stuffed with mozzarella), he'd only eaten about 2/3 of one of them. They were surely the biggest meatballs I've ever seen and, judging from the two small bites I managed to sneak from them at dinner, almost as delicious as they were big. Our companions enjoyed Betty's Deep Dish Lasagna and the Capellini Pompodoro.

Since I am on this little 30-day adventure in avoiding processed foods, I skipped the pasta and opted for the Chicken Artichoke & Sun Dried Tomato. It was described as "seared chicken breast topped with a white wine artichoke and sun dried tomato sauce." I thought that sounded delicious. But I ended up feeling as though I had gotten the evening's booby prize; while everyone around me was ooohing and aaahing over their meals, I was faced with two huge chicken breasts which, yes, came with artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes, but were not accompanied by any discernible sauce. They were incredibly bland. If this dish was, as Neil suggested, a nod to people who are on low-carb diets, it certainly succeeded in feeling like diet food (ridiculous portion-size notwithstanding). The small mound of risotto that accompanied the chicken was good, but perhaps only in comparison to the chicken.

The service, up to that point, had been slow, but we didn't mind. Our server was apologetic and seemed a bit frazzled, and we were well supplied with wine, so we were pretty forgiving. The only time I was really annoyed was when, after we'd finished our entrees, we were presented with the bill. He launched into an explanation of how he'd separated the checks on the ticket, only for one of us to have to interrupt him with "Are you offering dessert this evening?" Perhaps he was in a hurry to turn the table over, since by that point we'd been there for nearly three hours, but that was through no fault of ours.

Dessert was a vast improvement over my entree. Neil and I shared the berries and cream. Blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries were arranged on a pool of thick, sweet, vanilla-tinged (I think) cream. If I'd been in the privacy of my own home I would have licked the plate when the berries were gone. Another member of our group ordered tiramisu, only to find out that they were out it; he ordered cheesecake instead and was quite happy with it. And... I can't remember what the other members of our party had for dessert. (Lisa, feel free to comment and tell me!) Neil and I were both very impressed with the coffee and wondered where it was from; we've both noticed that restaurants with really good food often fall short when it comes to coffee (notable exception: Mayan Cafe, which serves Jackson's Organic). Le Gallo Rosso's coffee was quite good and I was excited to get a second cup of it.

Because I loved the atmosphere and, more importantly, because everyone else seemed to have great food, I am willing to overlook my boring chicken and give Le Gallo Rosso another chance. I'll even recommend it; just stay the hell away from that chicken (unless, you know, you like plain chicken breast for some reason).

(Aside: Ever since listening to Garlic and Sapphires, I can't get Ruth Reichl out of my head when dining at new restaurants. Neil feels the same way.)

Maido
I love, love Maido. I love the patio in the summer, and I love the dining room when the weather's bad. I love the small plates, the sushi, and I especially love the beer list. The service, if not always meticulous, is consistently friendly. It's one of my favorite restaurants.

Saturday night I experienced Maido in a whole new way; our friend Paul rented the karaoke room for his birthday party. Twelve of us squeezed into a back room that was set up with bench seating and tables (and a few extra chairs in our case) in a U-shape; at the front of the room was the karaoke machine. The moment I sat down and saw Paul and his wife Allison with their beers I knew that my 30-day beer fast was not going to last. I ordered - and loved - a Siberian Night. That was followed by two Left Hand Milk Stouts. Beer, I love you!

Anyway. I'm not going to review the food because I was moderately intoxicated and distracted by the karaoke; I will save that for another visit. Suffice it to say that it was, as always, extremely good. I will, however, review the karaoke. The catalog of songs was huge; I've never actually done karaoke in a bar before, so I can't compare it, but experienced karaoke-ers in our party thought it was quite comprehensive. (It did not, however, contain the one song I actually sing well, Ella Fitzgerald's "A Tisket, A Tasket.") The set-up they have is quite ingenious; there's a remote control sort of thing into which you enter the song number you want, and you can keep adding numbers to the queue while people are singing. We passed the remote around, adding songs, forgetting what order they were in, and then scrambling to grab a mic once our tunes started playing. We had SO. MUCH. FUN. By the end of the night we were all just singing along to all of the songs. (You should have heard our rousing rendition of "Sister Christian.") I like to think of myself as someone who can sort of sing, having done it all through school, but pretty much every single person in our party kicked my ass. Which was slightly demoralizing, but hopefully everyone was too drunk to remember how much I sucked.

I really, really want to do this again. The rates are not posted on Maido's website, but Neil thinks it's $50/hour. Which is kind of pricey, especially considering how quickly time flies when you have a big group of people. But if you can afford it - or if you can get everyone to go in with you on the cost of the room - it's definitely worth it.