A few weeks ago I met my friend, the source who prefers to be known as Sasso, for drinks and dinner at one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, The Aspinwall Grille. Seeing as that Sasso is a resident Aspinwallian, it was the perfect to excuse to revisit this bar/eatery. For whatever reason, I don't get to Aspinwall Grille as often as I'd like, despite its being both delicious and locationally convenient.

The Aspinwall Grille

The Aspinwall Grille is one of those establishments somewhere between restaurant and bar. It has a casual, sports bar kind of atmosphere, but with more table seating than bar space; it is certainly known more for its food than any sort of "bar scene" and it closes at a more typically restaurant time of 11 pm. The have sandwiches and burgers, but also appetizers and entrées. One of my very favorite selections at the Aspinwall Grille is the Grilled Lamb Salad. For one, it's all too rare to find lamb meat on the menus of reasonably-priced restaurants, and this is actual, lean lamb chop meat, not processed gyro-style meat; for another, it's one of the all too rare salads in this city with entirely good greens—no iceberg lettuce in sight. And as if that weren't enough, it comes with a number of my favorite salad fixin's, including roasted red peppers, pine nuts and gorgonzola cheese. While I do love this salad, I realize my own tendency to get into restaurant ordering ruts, and so I determined to try something new on this trip.

When we first arrived, it was already pretty crowded so we had to put our names in for a table—and this was a Thursday night! Not entirely surprising, as they are one of the most popular and tasty restaurants in the area. Certainly no sweat because it afforded us the perfect opportunity to sit down at the bar for a drink. The special that night was for bottles of Sam Adams Summer Ale, and you know me, always a sucker for a special. Though, at $3 the special isn't terribly cheap; Aspinwall Grille isn't the sort of place you go to drink for drinking's sake—at least if you're on a budget. Our wait for a table wasn't exhaustive, about one and a half rounds of drinks, and when we sat down we decided to start out with an appetizer. Sasso recommended the Grilled Portabella appetizer and who was I to complain? It has both hot sausage and gorgonzola cheese. Definitely delicious, it was an excellent choice to whet our appetites. For dinner, Sasso ordered the Veal Melanzanne, which appeared to be something of a dressed-up veal parm, including eggplant, proscuitto and asiago in addition to the standard veal parm ingredients, marinara and whatnot. Sasso enjoyed his supper and it inspired him to tell me about his Italian heritage and his own recipe for Chicken Parm. I elected to get one of the specials that night, a crimini mushroom ravioli with cream sauce. Unless I know that a restaurant serves fresh, homemade pasta, the only sort of pasta dish I'll order anymore is ravioli. Why? Because it's more likely to be fresh made at the restaurant—that is, more restaurants will go to the trouble of making their own, specialty ravioli, or at least of buying it frozen from someone else who makes it homemade. Very few restaurants will go to the trouble of making or stocking fresh linguine, fettuccine or penne. Boxed versions of the latter are cheap and readily available, whereas even the sort of ravioli you buy at the grocery store tends to be refrigerated or frozen. The other advantage of ravioli is that restaurants usually only give you so many, maybe ten or so and most of their mass is filling, not pasta. Too many pasta dishes offered at restaurants come with way too much pasta and way too few other ingredients. My crimini ravioli were good, though not spectacular. Based on my previous experiences at Aspinwall Grille, I was expecting something about them to wow me. The Grilled Portabella appetizer certainly deserved a "wow" but not the ravioli. It was pretty standard mushroom-cheese ravioli with pretty standard mushroom cream sauce. Additionally, upon eating our meals, Sasso and I noted that no salad came with the entrées. While we certainly didn't walk away from our meals that night anything short of stuffed, we also couldn't help but note that $13 and $15 dollar pasta entrées offered á la carte seemed a bit on the pricy side, especially at a bar and grille type place with a no-frills ambiance. This realization coupled with my un-wowing ravioli made for a bit of a disappointing experience, though to be fair I went in with high expectations based on previous experience, and I'll certainly go back again (in fact, I tried last week but found they were closed for a week or so summer vacation). Also to be fair, the non-pasta entrées do indeed come with side dishes, including potatoes, vegetables and rice pilaf, so it's probably best just to add this to the list of reasons not to order pasta entrées at restaurants. In the future I'll stick to appetizers, sandwiches and, of course, the Grilled Lamb Salad!