Friday, March 04, 2011

Alice Pizza - off my radar

I've been blessed (cursed) with restaurant radar. You know, that inkling you get when something just isn't right. The absence of the patron, who in former days was omnipresent, new staff (who seems new to the restaurant business) , groups of English speaking tourists being fawned over. Dishes that bear the marks of culinary ineptitude (ie vegetables that haven't been cut by someone who knows how to cut them, bad seasoning). I got all of these in rapid succession last night at Alice Pizza, and , as usual (to my my general discredit), I ignored what my radar was telling me. I should have walked out after waiting 25 minutes for a menu, but then I told myself they seem pretty busy with all these Anglo/student/tourist groups (ping!), then came the crostini with clumsily cut tomatoes complete with the inedible parts and accompanied by a wilted salad with a mouth puckering sour balsamic vinaigrette (ping, ping!), and the pizza, inspired by the memory of another (a gorgonzola, raspberry balsamic dream of a pie) , that was only a pale impression of what came before: microscopic squirts of sauce, two dollops of gorgonzola, and a crust that tasted like a naan from the takeout a few doors down. I should have gone there.