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Surprised by Spumoni

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Meat and potatoes.

We headed over to Santa Monica to grab some pizza. Unfortunately, once we had parked and filled the meter, we realized that the pizza place we wanted no longer existed. Unwilling to let a few quarters go to waste, we decided to take a little walk and see if any other restaurant might be able to tickle our fancy. What we found was Spumoni. Though not a pizza place, at least it was Italian.

They had some interesting-looking brunch specials, but we decided this wouldn’t be enough to tackle our hunger and we asked for the real menu. Within a few moments I knew exactly what I wanted: gnocchi. By far my favorite type of pasta, this place had a whole section on their menu devoted to the stuff. Of these, it was their gnocchi bolognese that really caught my eye. I ordered some and hoped that this gnocchi was worthy of its own section.

The gnocchi arrived piled high with meat sauce. So far so good. I began eating and quickly fell in love with the sauce. The stuff was so meaty and flavorful and just loaded with good old fashioned meat juice. The gnocchi wasn’t too shabby either. Loaded with the meat juices, these bits of potato pasta had some good flavor. The pasta itself didn’t quite taste homemade, which didn’t mean it was bad, but just felt lacking a little bit. Nonetheless, the meat sauce more than made up for whatever was lacking. Also, it was nice that the bowl was just loaded. All too often a fancy Italian place drops off like 8 bits of gnocchi and assumes that will be enough to satisfy. Not Spumoni, though. There was enough leftover in the end to feed myself another meal the next day.

Although our lunch started out with the disappointment of missing a pizza place, we ended up pretty satisfied with Spumoni. It’s not the best pasta in the world, but they sure do know how to cook up some meat sauce and how to place emphasis on gnocchi.