Saundra and I recently went to one of our favorite local restaurants for a ladies' supper (and you thought ladies only ate lunch, didn't you?). We have been frequent Moré patrons over the years, though we rarely set foot through their doors. How so? Well, Moré is one of our favorite Wheel Deliver restaurants, and as a result we have dined on Moré's cuisine much more often in the privacy of Saundra's home than in the restaurant itself. But in addition to being a long-time Wheel Deliver restaurant, Moré is also a frequent Entertainment dining club member restaurant, and so a few weeks ago while Neilbert was off on his Wednesday night skate, Saundra and I headed off to Moré.

Moré

Despite being in Oakland, Moré is most certainly not a student hang-out. It's an upscale-ish restaurant with a dark-wood lattice Mediterranean décor that attracts a clientele of wealthy senior citizens—you know, the older folks who live in all those Craig Street apartment buildings that no Pitt student could afford. I say upscale-ish because it's not á la carte, as are restaurants of the particular class that do serve á la carte, such as Café Allegro or Laforet, being consequently much more expensive and fancy schmancy. Entrées at Moré run between $12 (for pasta-based dishes) and $25 (for your upper crust steaks and shellfish). All non-pasta entrées include a choice of two sides, soup, salad, pasta, potato or vegetable; pasta entrées include salad, of course. Saundra and I opened our meal that night with two glasses of iced-tea and an order of the fried zucchini. It was a breaded fried zucchini, and while I normally only like the beer-battered sort, I was pleasantly surprised by Moré's breading, forming a nice, firm crust, not too thin or thick, and not falling off before it got to my mouth. The appetizer came with a bowl of grated parmesan and a serving of hearty homemade marinara sauce, and while I could have done with more of the marinara (What can I say? I'm a saucy gal), the freedom to coat my zucchini liberally with cheese made up for any shortfall in the quantity of the marinara. You must understand, I'm the sort of person that hates when waiters shred parmesan over your food fresh at the table—while I certainly appreciate the taste advantages of fresh shredded parmesan, if I had my druthers, I would let the waiter go on shredding for five minutes. As it is, I usually just end up feeling guilty after twenty seconds, saying thank you, that's enough. Thus, I appreciate Moré's generous willingness to let me ravage their cheese supply. We ordered the zucchini in effort to slake an, at the time, persistent craving on Saundra's part for fried zucchini, but our usual favorite Moré appetizer to share, the one we normally get through Wheel Deliver, is the hors d'oeuvres sampler which includes shrimp scampi (the entirety of which Saundra eats), deviled crab (my favorite), seafood coquille, fried provolone and fried zucchini. It's also more expense, the price of an entrée in its own right, but an excellent way to sample a multitude of Moré delights.

Outside Moré

For our main course, Saundra opted for the shrimp scampi entrée with a salad and the vegetable of the day, beets. I was sorely tempted to order my very favorite Moré entrée, the stuffed deviled crab, but then I saw on the daily specials menu that they were offering a crab-stuffed portabella mushroom for five dollars less than the deviled crab, so I gave it a try, along with the Italian wedding soup and twice-baked potato. Moré salads are better than average on the iceberg lettuce scale, offering some darker greens, at least, but not enough darker leafy lettuce for my taste. Saundra had no qualms, though, and it was her eating the salad, not me. The Italian wedding soup offered predictable yumminess—as soups go it's a hard one to mess up, but also hard to do something truly fabulous and unique with. Saundra enjoyed her scampi, though says it's not the best she's ever had—but you must consider, Saundra has been ordering scampi at restaurants at least since I can first remember sitting at restaurant tables in childhood, and I imagine for years before I leapt into existence, so she harbors many memories of scampis gone-by. She also quite liked the beets, but after about two beets, she couldn't remember if they were low carb, and so erred on the side of caution in not finishing them. My stuffed mushrooms were, just as I had expected, a sly doppelganger to the deviled crab, only piled onto two portabella caps. The portabellas were tender and the crab stuffing was soft, sweet and creamy. My only complaint, and maybe I've just been too heavily influenced through osmosis by Saundra's new low carb eating habits, but I found the breading on top of the crab stuffing to be way too thick. I had to scrape the breading off right down to the crab; otherwise the texture of the breading was much too dominant in each forkful. The potato was good, but I knew that because I've had it before, and I was rather stuffed by this point in the evening and decided to have it boxed to take home for Neilbert. He has something of a penchant for restaurant leftovers, especially when he comes home from skating.

And so we bid adieu to Moré... until next Wheel Deliver.