D received a generous gift card to North Italia before the pandemic. North Italia is a mini-chain, with locations from California to Florida. We wanted to use it for a dine-in experience, but like many restaurants, it was only open for take-out. When they started accepting dine-in reservations, we jumped at the opportunity to go.
Although we usually opt to dine indoors, this time we chose outdoor seating since it is more Covid-safe. The Irvine location has a small, but nice patio.
They did a good job of spacing out the tables to be socially distant.
I like to do research before I visit restaurants so I have an idea of what to order beforehand (thanks, Yelp!). Am I the only one who does this? I wanted to try different dishes, so I told my family that we would be ordering “family-style”, which they went along with.
One unanimous recommendation that I read about was to order the White Truffle Garlic Bread ($13.50) house made ricotta, mozzarella, grana padano, herbs as an appetizer. It was good as all the rave reviews talked about! Probably the best garlic bread I have ever had!
I ordered a Caesar salad with salmon ($21), mostly for n (who loves salmon!). This would make a nice entree salad if you are a low-carb person.
I debated ordering the Bolognese ($20) traditional meat sauce, tagliatelle noodle & grana padano cheese, because it sounded a little too simple. However, it is listed as the “House Specialty” so we decided to go for it. The homemade pasta was so good, and we liked the meat sauce too. The only bad thing is that we wished there was more!
Next was Short Rib Radiatore ($22) parmesan cream, fresh horseradish, wilted arugula, herbed breadcrumb. I liked that this was a unique dish that you would not find at another restaurant. It was definitely decadent, which made it a good dish to share.
Finally, we ordered the Italian classic, Chicken Parmesan crushed tomato, aged provolone, mozzarella, parmesan rigatoni. This was a nice rendition, with a fairly large piece of chicken (not sure why the pasta portion was so small in comparison). Again, I am glad we were all able to share a few bites.
For dessert, we had to order tiramisu, because that is D’s favorite dessert. The crunchy chocolate ball topping (not sure what it is called) added a nice texture contrast to the creamy layers. Definitely recommend this if you are a tiramisu fan.
Have you been to North Italia? What is your favorite dish?
1 Comment
It sounds like you picked a lot of very good dishes. I would like to have tried some of them too.