Did you know that Cas used to own an Italian restaurant? It just so happened to be voted the BEST Italian restaurant in Portland. It also happened to be voted the best Italian restaurant in Portland for something like 10 years straight.
We also have the recipe book. And we are both good cooks.
So, when we may have higher standards for Italian restaurants than for most other types. I don’t know how to make Ethiopian or Japanese or really good Pho. So, those places automatically have the “I can’t make this at home” thing going for them. But we can make restaurant quality Italian food at home. That is the standard that an Italian restaurant must live up to…is it better than our homemade food.
Sadly, Il Granaio was not up to snuff. Cas has decided that he should make a business out of teaching restaurants to make a cheese/charcuterie plate. Il Granaio could be a potential customer. The plate had nothing-special-grocery-store cheese and meat. And not even from the expensive part of the grocery store. From the back of the grocery store. Next to the craft singles. Did we give them enough of a chance based on that kick off? Maybe not. I took most of my gnocchi home with the intention of changing up the sauce to make it taste better. It needed lemon, probably to counter the gorgonzola or something slightly sweet to balance it better. As much as I hate to say it, because I hate wasting food and have been known to eat things that closely resemble garbage out of this hatred of wasting food…but after a few days when I still couldn’t be bothered with making an unpalatable food palatable, I tossed it.
So, sadly, despite being in downtown Mount Vernon and being cute (at least from the outside), we could not be won over.