‘Italian’
On our last night in Cape Town, we were thinking Italian and headed back to The Waterfront to find Meloncino. The restaurant might just have the greatest view of any pizza place in the world, but I must admit I have not seen every pizza view in existence. While great views are available all over Cape Town, I was more curious if great pizza existed as well.
Just a couple of weeks ago, a new pizza place opened in Culver City called Wildcraft. Their schtick is the use of sourdough in their pizzas, which is cool with me, but I’m not sure if it entirely qualifies as being wild. Nonetheless, I was eager to try it out and see just how wild and crafty it would be.
Sometimes it’s hard to decide where to eat. Sure, I have a list of places, but they aren’t always in convenient locations. That’s when I turn to things like Groupon, because if I’m going out to eat somewhere I’m unfamiliar with, I’ll be damned if I pay full price. On this particular eve, I found a discount for an Italian place in West LA called Campagnola Trattoria.
Sedona isn’t exactly a fancy-pants place. It’s more for new agers and outdoorsy people than those who prefer to put on a suit and tie every day. So when we told a couple different people we were celebrating our marriage up there, they all suggested eating at Cucina Rustica in the Village of Oak Creek, which was apparently the place to go for such things. As evidenced by its name, Cucina Rustica is an Italian place with a fair variety of options at slightly pricey, but mostly reasonable prices considering the place is for tourists.
While I never felt unsafe in Arusha, I was told it wasn’t the kind of city to walk around in at night. This proved to be difficult when it came to dinner, because I was staying in a hotel on the outskirts of the city. This meant my eating options were limited if I wanted to avoid getting mugged (which I’m still not sure was an actual possibility). Yet, there were a couple restaurants near my hotel that catered to foreigners like myself. The prices were steeper than the local places in the city, but you can’t put a price on safety. Or something like that. On my first night in Arusha, I opted for The Blue Heron.
EDIT: This Sammy’s is closed, but you can still get their decent pizza around LA and Vegas.
In dire need of portable food while in Studio City, I wandered into Sammy’s Woodfired Pizza. Apparently Sammy’s has locations throughout Southern California and Nevada, but this was the first I had ever seen or heard of such a place. I took a quick look at the menu and while there were a couple of mildly interesting pizzas, most were pretty basic. Faced with such choices, I went with old faithful: pepperoni.
For my birthday dinner this year, my lovely wife-to-be took me out to the Los Feliz part of town as a surprise. It’s not a part of town we spend much time in, and we made our way to Little Dom’s, an Italian place that hovers between fancy and neighborhoody. The menu had a lot of great-looking options and we decided to start things off with an appetizer and wine.
Near Century City there is a building that only houses restaurants with five letter names that have two of the same letters in a row. It is there that my friends and I dined at Sotto, which finds itself below Picca. ‘Twas a night of the first ever Summer Restaurant Week by DineLA, but these plans had been made without Restaurant Week in mind, so that kind of just turned out to be a bonus…for some people, because I decided to stick to the real menu.
My buddy, DCo, is a bit of a pizza snob. It works out well for me, because he likes to point me in the direction of awesome new and old pizza places. Recently, he told me about a new place called Lago D’Argento over in Silverlake. It took a bit of convincing, but finally I had a real reason to go to that part of town and decided to make a run for pizza while there. I invited another buddy, Jeff, to join and we checked the place out.
For those of you unfamiliar with places of high altitude, allow me to explain the results of finding yourself far above sea level. The first thing you’ll notice is a shortness of breath, when a short walk up the stairs leaves you breathless. Next, you’ll find yourself in a constant quest for water, as the altitude saps the water from your body and leaves you dehydrated. Such is the case in Breckenridge, Colorado, sitting at 9600 feet above sea level. While I had previously thought such altitude issues only applied to humans, a pizza from Giampietro taught me this was just not the case.