Here's something you might be interested in.
Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
An American orders spaghetti and meatballs in Poway
Turns out to be far less boring than it sounds thanks to Mamma Teresa
If you don't say stop, the Parmesan piles up. Spaghetti and meatballs. Mamma Teresa.
I've eaten lunch in Poway a lot over the years, and have even walked past Mamma Teresa a few times, sometimes on my way to the Five Guys next door, or to the Japanese restaurant on the other side. I never really thought to go in because, let's face it, Italian restaurants don't seem that exciting. We all grew up eating spaghetti, and ordering pasta in a restaurant is widely considered the worst bang for your buck because the ingredients cost so little and the results so simple to achieve at home.
That said, pasta makes a great comfort food, so I finally made my way into Mamma Teresa's last week. Every day since, I've been kicking myself for not going sooner.
It's not trying to compete with the burger chain next door.
What I hadn't realized is that this is a legit Italian restaurant, owned and operated by friendly folk who learned about cooking and eating and enjoying life back where such things were pretty much invented. As if their accents weren't enough to lend an air of authenticity, they swear by their ingredients, including sauces, spices, oils and prosciutto di parma (thinly sliced, dry-cured ham) shipped across the Atlantic for Poway's enjoyment.
The prices don't necessarily reflect this. An $8 lunch nets you salad, entrée and bread service — not in huge portions but enough to fill me up. The bread arrives warm and soft, glorious when dipped in a bit of olive oil.
I felt silly and stereotypical doing so, but I had to go with the spaghetti and meatballs. I was here to be a critic, after all, and what better way to judge an ethnic restaurant than to order its most Americanized dish?
No regrets. Not for a minute. Well, maybe for about fifteen seconds, when at first glance I thought they gave me way too little pasta to spread around the generous heaps of meatball and what Tony Soprano would call "gravy." Then I tasted it, and by the end of my meal I was spooning up every last bit of that sauce.
There's nothing like terrific ingredients to show the error of heavy handed cooking. I'm always impressed when a sandwich has seven or eight toppings, for example, because my mental calculations insist more is bound to be better. But the truth is, if you build a dish around one or two really delicious things, the results are unbeatable.
This meatballs and tomato sauce dish just needed a couple herbs to produce some of the best Italian food I've encountered in San Diego, and certainly for the price. Thanks to Mamma Teresa for bringing a little Italy to Poway.
Here's something you might be interested in.
An American orders spaghetti and meatballs in Poway
Turns out to be far less boring than it sounds thanks to Mamma Teresa
An American orders spaghetti and meatballs in Poway
Turns out to be far less boring than it sounds thanks to Mamma Teresa
If you don't say stop, the Parmesan piles up. Spaghetti and meatballs. Mamma Teresa.
I've eaten lunch in Poway a lot over the years, and have even walked past Mamma Teresa a few times, sometimes on my way to the Five Guys next door, or to the Japanese restaurant on the other side. I never really thought to go in because, let's face it, Italian restaurants don't seem that exciting. We all grew up eating spaghetti, and ordering pasta in a restaurant is widely considered the worst bang for your buck because the ingredients cost so little and the results so simple to achieve at home.
That said, pasta makes a great comfort food, so I finally made my way into Mamma Teresa's last week. Every day since, I've been kicking myself for not going sooner.
It's not trying to compete with the burger chain next door.
What I hadn't realized is that this is a legit Italian restaurant, owned and operated by friendly folk who learned about cooking and eating and enjoying life back where such things were pretty much invented. As if their accents weren't enough to lend an air of authenticity, they swear by their ingredients, including sauces, spices, oils and prosciutto di parma (thinly sliced, dry-cured ham) shipped across the Atlantic for Poway's enjoyment.
The prices don't necessarily reflect this. An $8 lunch nets you salad, entrée and bread service — not in huge portions but enough to fill me up. The bread arrives warm and soft, glorious when dipped in a bit of olive oil.
I felt silly and stereotypical doing so, but I had to go with the spaghetti and meatballs. I was here to be a critic, after all, and what better way to judge an ethnic restaurant than to order its most Americanized dish?
No regrets. Not for a minute. Well, maybe for about fifteen seconds, when at first glance I thought they gave me way too little pasta to spread around the generous heaps of meatball and what Tony Soprano would call "gravy." Then I tasted it, and by the end of my meal I was spooning up every last bit of that sauce.
There's nothing like terrific ingredients to show the error of heavy handed cooking. I'm always impressed when a sandwich has seven or eight toppings, for example, because my mental calculations insist more is bound to be better. But the truth is, if you build a dish around one or two really delicious things, the results are unbeatable.
This meatballs and tomato sauce dish just needed a couple herbs to produce some of the best Italian food I've encountered in San Diego, and certainly for the price. Thanks to Mamma Teresa for bringing a little Italy to Poway.
Comments