Message: | After several years of thinking about it, we finally made it to a family dinner night at Campanile.
The starter was a white corn and lima bean salad; fresh and refreshing, the portion size seemed a bit small, and certainly served on a flat plate with no spoon, it was tough to get onto our dishes.
The main was sauteed salmon wrapped in grape leaves, with grilled/roasted/broiled potatoes and squash. Blew me away. Finest piece of salmon I've had since the last time I had salmon at Campanile, perfectly cooked. Not a touch of dryness to the fish. The squash was the real surprise - I'm still not sure exactly how it was cooked, but it absolutely burst with flavor.
The dessert was an "ice cream soda" - moscato d'asti with "ice cubes" made out of fruit reductions (one cassis, one rhubarb, one raspberry), with peach ice cream. The cassis "cube" was awesome - tart to the point of pain. Two of their La Brea Bakery "Breakfast Bars" - like those Knotts Berry Farm Cookies that have jelly topped by a shortbread cookie, just a million times better.
$35, including coffee. Not cheap, but possibly a better value and much more relaxing experience than their increasingly mad-house grilled cheese nights.
(Note: Skimmed through the Campanile wine list. Amazing to compare it to the Patina list which is now online; not a single "star" wine among the Campanile selection. No Grange, no DRC, no Chateau Latour, whereas the Patina list seems to be populated entirely with these "correct choices." Surprisingly, most wines seemed under the $100 level. Still, we didn't get a bottle - I'm not really clear how a party of two is able to consume a bottle of wine at a restaurant and then drive themselves home.) |