Mangia!

I like Mangia. It's good for drinks, it's good for a night out, it's good for HOT JAZZ, it's good for debauchery, it's good for red wine, it's good for good times, it's good for being hip and seen, it's good for being intimate and private, it's good for pasta, it's good for salad, it's good for dessert. Evidently, it's also good for 20-somethings to get smashed and yak all over the bathroom, but I don't take that as a reflection of the eats.

No indeed, I ate there for dinner a few days ago and it was fantastic.

For starters, I had a salad. The menu, I have to say, blew my mind: 9 salads to choose from. I mean, now that's options! There were salads with tomatoes, salads with figs, salads with bleu, and others, too. But the one that stood out to me was the Honey Artichoke Salad.

First off, it was a healthy bed of greens. I get tired of "salads" that are just a snippet of this and some of that and a few twigs of frisee. I mean, I want to get my greens in for the day. But brace yourselves, folks, because I ate some olives, too! There were a bunch of warm artichoke hearts on the top, and they must have been tossed in a honey vinaigrette, because they were really sweet and viniagry. And there were also a lot of sweet red peppers; they must have been honeyed too, because they were super sweet. But lurking underneath were slices of kalamata olives--whoa baby! And I ate them! Somehow, the salty was really nice with the sweet of the other veggies. Crazy, right. Yah. Nuts. You can count on Mangia for getting you to eat (hence, mangia, haha. sorry. that was terrible).

Then I had the porcini tagliatelle. It's mostly house-made mushroom noodles with a sundried tomato cream sauce on top. But I needed to get my other veggies for the day, so I asked the chef to toss in whatever they had in the back. Whoa.

Fresh spinach, sugar snap peas, and delicious little slices of mushrooms that almost competed with the ones I feel for at Stellina. I don't know what these pasta chefs do to their mushrooms, but it's fantastic!

Ok so I mostly ate out the veggies and left the creamy noodles, but yum anyway. Let's mangia!