Tarkblog

We had dinner Friday night at a little Italian restaurant named Amici’s, on the east side of downtown Indy. It was in a spot I had never really spent any time before; a very residential area to say the least. Many old old homes, and one of them had been converted into a restaurant. The wife and I had never heard of the place before; we met some friends there for dinner.

We go inside. THe place is pretty small and very oddly shaped. It was basically the downstairs of a two story house that had all of the walls taken out and had been converted into a seating area. Tables were kind of just placed in random spots in order to get seat as many as possible (about 25 people, perhaps). In the back was the kitchen, hidden by a sliding door.

Now, at first it seemed very quaint. It came across as very authentic small Italian type. We ordered our various dishes and watied a while. Then started the salad.

It was basically iceburg lettuce with a small tomato wedge and some pepperocinis. It had a balsamic vinaigrette on top. But it was very, well, cheap.

THen came dinner. I had ordered Chicken Botacelli, which was a breadded chicken breast covered in a cream sauce with proscuitto (sp?). It had some ziti on the site. Wife ordered the special “raviolis” with marinara sauce. Our other people ordered similarly.

They brought the dishes out one at a time, as they were done being cooked. So, the first guy who got his dish waited a few minutes. Then I got mine. Then a few minutes later, the other two came out. Kind of strange.

The food was good, but I mean, it was something I could have easily made myself at home. And my dinner was $17, so I could have bought all of the ingredients and made it for less than that.

As the dinner ended, we got a piece of tiramisu. It was actually really good, but again, something I could have made at home pretty easily. I have no idea what it cost, but it was expensive I’m sure.

I had to venture to the restroom before we left, and I had to ask how to get there. It was upstairs, which meant up a bunch of rickety old uneven steps. When I found it, I noticed that upstairs housed even more tables in obscure places. One right outside the bathroom door, for example. The restroom floor was completely uneven, the sink looked in pretty bad shape, and all of the plumbing was completely exposed.

I’m still trying to figure out how to draw the line between quaint and trachy. This place came across as both. But I think it was more on the side of a trachy place that some folks opened up a restaurant in and decided they could charge a lot of money for. The place was packed, and a lot of the diners seemed genuinely happy with their experiences. Not that mine was bad, but all of the charm that would normally be associated with a place like this was lost on me simply realizing that the place wasn’t really that great.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 22nd, 2006 at 9:58 am and is filed under Random Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.