It is easily one of the punniest names out there. Yeah, really creative to combine “eat” and “Italy” to create a restaurant and market name. But there is no doubt that judging the name of a restaurant is like judging a book by its cover. It’s what’s inside that counts and apparently the inside of Eataly has impressed enough people to open up locations in the biggest cities in the US. I paid a quick visit to the Chicago location when I was in need of a snack.

Of course, what counts for a snack at Eataly? A Rose wine slushie? Some sort of pastry? Nah, I went looking for something savory and found the ravioli bar called Ravioli & Co. I went for the Ravioli al Prosciutto, which is stuffed with, shockingly, prosciutto in a light butter sauce with parmesan and freshly ground black pepper.

It may have taken far longer than expected to prepare, but eventually it was a thing of beauty. As the plate said, “Life is a combination of pasta and magic.” Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference, and while this ravioli stuffed with prosciutto may not have transcended beyond a simple dish, it was the execution of that simplicity that blurred the lines of reality and magicdom.

Phoenix may not seem like a pizza town, but it unquestionably has some great stuff. There’s Pizzeria Bianco, of course, but also a number of other pizza places that have made Phoenix their second homes. Call them snowbird pizzas if you want. Humble Pie is one that has seen success in the area with a few locations. I headed to the one at Desert Ridge to see what it was all about.

There was a pizza there that I simply couldn’t not order. It was simply called The Egg Pizza, but the ingredients weren’t so simple. I mean, sure, there was a sunny side up egg on it, but also smoked mozzarella, prosciutto and simply extra virgin olive oil as sauce. When it arrived, I was a little surprised that the egg was just kind of in the center and just placed there, but I quickly set to work on unleashing the runny yolk and devouring the pizza.

Where this pizza went well, it went really well. For example, the smoked mozzarella was fantastic to the extent that I almost think every pizza with mozzarella should consider swapping it out for the smoked variety. The egg was also cooked perfectly. As for the rest, I have some gripes. Namely, the pizza seemed to have just spent too much time in the oven. The crust was charred, and not like in a cool artsy dough bubble way. And the prosciutto followed suit, being dried up from too much time spent in the oven where it maybe shouldn’t have even been in the oven in the first place, because prosciutto doesn’t need to be cooked.

Alas, this pizza showed a lot of potential. With the right cooking time, it probably could have been amazing. Unfortunately, Humble Pie just couldn’t quite get there.

Pork and booze are easily two of the greatest things that can be consumed on the planet, if not just two of the greatest things in general. Celestino in Pasadena is fully aware of this and has combined them in a pasta dish worth writing about. It is called the Pennette Con Prosciutto e Vodka, but it may as well be called Paradiso.

I truly have no idea how Vodka, a drink from Eastern Europe, made its way into classic Italian cuisine, but then again pasta came from China and the tomatoes came from the New World, so I suppose very little of Italian food originated in Italy. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that prosciutto is a real Italian cured meat and it goes well with everything. In this pasta dish, it is crumbled into bits and dispersed throughout, giving each bite a pop of yum.

The penne itself may not be special and most likely starts out dry, but it works well as a base for the light sauce and powerful prosciutto. It’s the kind of meal that may put you in a food coma (especially after a few rounds of bread), but it’s a coma well worth dropping into.

Right around when I first moved to LA, essentially broke, I made a trip to Bottle Rock. Having little to no disposable income, I wrote the place off as overpriced and didn’t return until this past weekend. What I found was a restaurant and wine bar that was not only well-priced, but also delicious. Was I wrong the first time I went? Have I become jaded by the prices of LA? Did Bottle Rock simply change things up? These answers may never be known, but what is known is my experience there. Let’s start from the beginning.

The night before my visit to Bottle Rock, I had a few too many drinks. It had been a while since I put alcohol into my body and my body wasn’t exactly happy with me. Usually, my favorite morning after meal is grilled cheese with bacon, but I hadn’t eaten that. Instead I had just gone about my day like any other. That’s where Bottle Rock comes in, but not yet.

Before, I should talk about our server, who was awesome. He not only explained every beer on tap, but picked out a nice, reasonable bottle of wine for the ladies, which they loved.

Then, I found a shiny beacon of joy on the menu – Grilled Truffle Cheese. This sandwich was built on imported pecorino boschetto and filled with provolone and house made truffle butter. As if that wasn’t enough to get your mouth watering, you could drop an extra two bucks to get prosciutto inside to join the cheese and butter. Everything about the sandwich screamed, “I am a grown up, but not too old for grilled cheese,” which was perfect, because the night before I was thinking about how I was grown up, but not enough to kick back a few drinks, college-style. I ordered it at my first opportunity.

When it arrived, I was more than a little disappointed by what I found chilling on the plate next to the sandwich. It was some sort of leafy green salad. I know they felt the need to put something on the plate other than a single sandwich for 13 bucks, but it saddens me to know this was their choice. I’m not grown up enough for that. Plus, I was not aware that this salad would be there and had I known I would have at least tried to arrange for something more unvegan-friendly.

Fortunately, salad is far less devastating than pickles and other vegetables and despite taking up space, it did very little to affect my eating experience. And what an experience it was. This was a perfectly constructed grown up grilled cheese through and through. The bread was grilled to the perfect crisp, while the interior had a great truffle taste without being overwhelming. My only complaint is that it ended too soon, especially for the price. Were I a salad eater, the price would have seemed just about right, but I am an unvegan and in the end I paid 13 bucks for a sandwich. A delicious sandwich, but a sandwich nonetheless.

Yet, I must give credit where it is due. The Grilled Truffle Cheese has completely altered my view of both Bottle Rock and the possibilities of grilled cheese. Issues aside, this is a place I would recommend to unvegans and those crazy other people.

In the depths of the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, there is a multitude of fancy restaurants just waiting for the eating. But wanting to get on the road and needing a quick bite, we made our way to a sandwich shop called ‘wichcraft. I liked the nice little pun they used there, and also thought it might be a Tom Colicchio restaurant because of the “craft” used in the name (I later confirmed this, but I must confess I didn’t know who Tom Colicchio was until a few minutes before settling on ‘wichcraft).

After a long look (the line took forever) at the long sandwich menu, I finally decided on a nice, simple, unvegan sandwich. It was simply called the Prosciutto with Sweet Butter and was just that. No lettuce. No tomato. Just nice, simple and at the appropriate price of $7.50. Served on a baguette, the sandwich took about five minutes to prepare (along with a couple other things I ordered for the girlfriend) and then it was reading for viewing and eating.

Upon sandwich devouring, I found that the baguette was quite soft. It sure could have used some crisp to the crust, but the interior of the roll was a good texture. The prosciutto, as with most prosciutto, was delicious. Very few sandwiches have prosciutto as the centerpiece, but it can definitely hold its own. As for the butter, I was really excited that this was the central lubricant of the sandwich. Where most sandwiches go for mayo, oil or some sort of aioli, I grew up eating sandwiches with butter on them. Okay, it was usually margarine, but you get the point. So I was excited for the butter and it did its job well, but it wasn’t amazing. Right, I know butter can’t really be amazing, but the sweetness was so subtle that it may as well not have been there. This was a shame, because a bit more sugar could have made this sandwich awesome.

Instead, it stayed as just ‘some.

For a night out on the town with the family, we decided to head to I Cugini at the recommendation of their concierge. This hardly pronounceable restaurant was in Santa Monica and had a pretty cool setup with an outdoorsy patio-esque seating area. The menu offered some pretty good-looking food, but the menu wasn’t as robust as a typical Italian place. Nonetheless, I was transfixed by an item on the menu that I had never seen before. It was called a “Bomba” and was mixed up with the pizzas, so I knew it had to be somewhat similar to pizza.

I asked the waiter what it was, and she said that bomba meant bomb in Italian, so the dish was sort of like an Italian quesadilla. I had never eaten a bomb before, so I decided to get one. The bomb I chose had fontina, mascarpone cheese, prosciutto and truffle oil.

When it arrived, I saw the reason it was called a bomb. The thing was all puffed up like fresh-baked pita and covered with strips of prosciutto. Then the waitress sliced it up and I could see that beautiful mix of cheese oozing out and waiting for me to eat it. It was sliced into pizza-style wedges, but it was a lot harder to eat than pizza. All the cheesy goodness and flakey bread made the bomb a little tough to eat, but when I got it into my mouth, each bite was delicious. It was also a lot lighter to eat than pizza, so I ate the whole thing without destroying my stomach.

The bomba is definitely worth getting at I Cugini, and although I can’t speak for their other food, I now know to look out for bombas when I find myself at an Italian restaurant.

We all know the unparalelled benefits of eating meat, but Theodore Gray has developed yet another; a Thermal Lance. According to his article on the Popsci.com, a thermal lance “is used to cut up scrap metal and rescue people from collapsed buildings.”

Settling on prosciutto as the most energy-efficient meat, Gray created a meat torch capable of cutting through metal, when oxygen is fed through it. In doing so he unleashed the full power of meat. I’m pretty sure this means that people should always have meat around, in case of emergency.

In the video, he also makes an attempt at a vegetarian lance. Before he even began, I knew this attempt was doomed to failure. As he began feeding oxygen through the breadsticks and cucumber, the vegetarian lance combusted far too rapidly and was unable to do any real damage. In food, just as in energy creation, the unvegan option wins out.

For recognizing a previously untapped use of meat and demonstrating how vegetables just don’t cut it, Theodore Gray, you are a true Unvegan Hero!

(via Popular Science)