Thursday, August 02, 2007

Prizzi's Piazza
5923 Franklin Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90028

This third time around for Supper club, we decided to go somewhere for Italian food. Prizzi's Piazza was the choice of the night. The place itself was a small restaurant in a row of mini restaurants that line Franklin Ave, and I passed by it a few times before realizing that was the location. I lucked out on parking (yess!!!), which was seriously lucky because the only other thing that would have been available was valet.

We were seated in an upstairs table, which was kind of noisy as all the sounds from downstairs echoed throughout the ceiling. As we settled in and took a glance at our menus, we quickly made our choices because our waitress didn't seem to make the rounds very much on the second floor. We first started with....
...their "famous" garlic bread. More like garlic LOGS. A scant four pieces to share, it was good and garlic-y- everything i promised to be. It had good minced garlic clumps to punch up the garlic aspect of it, and covered in freshly grated Parmesan cheese - that's always good in my book.
A plate of calamari. Delicious, deep fried rings of seafood...there is no use trying to resist it. I know I sure didn't. This was a good plate of it, and with some of their marinara dipped on top, it was a slice of oil drenched heaven.
I felt like something simpler so I went with the old standby - spaghetti and meatballs. The dish was basically...eh. It was okay. Nothing spectacular. I know you're going to say, "But it was spaghetti and meatballs! What were you expecting?!" and I agree, yes, it IS just spaghetti and meatballs, and that's the point. Something this simple is most telling of the restaurant. First with the meatballs - not salty or flavorful enough. I think on the inside there was a bit of mozzarella, which was nice texture wise, but again, it didn't add flavor. The spaghetti itself was okay. Not overcooked, which I liked. The sauce was alright too, but I like bigger chunks of tomato in my sauce. Eh.
Pizza! This tomato, basil and cheese pizza was shared by Jane, Anna and Patrick. Their verdict was....eh, it's pizza. Nothing spectacular. The bread looked decent, the toppings looked fresh. Better than Domino's, worse than Abbott Kinney Pizza, I'm assuming.
Steven's pasta was an amazing -Frutti di Mare. It contained shrimp, mussels, clams, calamari, Ahi tuna and Tilapia, are sauteed in a light and spicy tomato sauce over a small nest of black linguine. It was basically almost everything tasty from the ocean, thrown together with some pasta and tomatoes, and thrown on a plate. It was seafood upon seafood. This was definitely one of the best things of the night.
George is so kindly is displaying his meal - Petti di Pollo alla Marsala. Medallions of chicken sauteed in a Marsala wine reduction sauce with fresh mushrooms and sun dried tomatoes were on the plate, and everyone agreed, was the best dish of the night. The chicken was moist and flavorful, the mushrooms soaked up all the rich marsala sauce. Delicious.

Prizzi's was okay. I still think C&O's is superior in quality and price, but this was an alright place. A bit unmemorable, but not too shabby.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

that's some good looking calamari -- not to mention garlic bread