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When I was growing up
Italian restaurants had Chianti bottles in that straw basket thing
with candles sticking out of their necks at every table. They were
dark and warm and I got to pick the red wax from the checked tablecloth.
You had your choice of spaghetti or pizza and that was it. Then the
ultimate cross-over food, fried calamari, came along and changed the
face of Italian dining as we know it. What we're left with is celebrity
chefs, modern architecture and the ubiquitous squid. Like this place,
they have become indiscernible from the trendy pan-Asian joints and
the ever-popular new-American catchall (which we all know means that
hey serve a bunch of different stuff that will ultimately cause your
wallet to scream for mercy). It turns out that this place is as Italian
as I am (0%) and almost as empty (5%). It certainly wouldn't have
been my first choice for a workday lunch, but apparently the ex-co-worker
who took us all there had some scratch invested in the place. Now
he has no job and an Italian-ish ghost town suckpit on his
hands. Ah, hindsight. My steak strips were serviceable, and, ultimately,
there was absolutely no calamari on the menu. The appetizers--fried
artichoke, zucchini flowers and soft shelled crab--were the best part
of the meal, and were actually pretty damn good, but if there were
really no such thing as free lunch, I think I could have lived out
the rest of my life without Gusto and been okay with it. [MF]
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