Sorrento's Pizza

Review #9: Sorrento’s – Margherita Pizza – $19

This is a serious sports bar!

I hear that Taste of Cincinnati is the official kickoff of summer in Cincinnati.  I’m debating on grabbing the foods that one best of awards and doing a blog post for this event.  Hopefully some people will enjoy seeing some of the things they missed.  The only problem is I’m still 8 weeks behind on my posts.  Fail! 

Mmm...greasy, greasy garlic bread.

For this week I have my first pizza place of the year, Sorrento’s.  It took 9 weeks for me to finally get into going to a pizza place.  I had to clean out my system from doing all those damn burgers last year.  You can find Sorrento’s in Norwood off of Montgomery rd a bit north of the Norwood Lateral.  They are a well established place dating back to 1956.  They also serve a few of the classic Italian dishes that you’d expect.  Their website says that they have been mentioned in tons of new articles and have won several awards for best pizza.  I had been extremely busy and trying to meet up with a vegetarian friend of mine and managed to make it out on Thursday, March 1^st.  The first thing you notice inside the building is that it was empty.  I don’t know if there was something awesome happening elsewhere that night but it was eerily quiet, with only one patron at the massive bar.  You’ll also notice that they are insane about their local sports including Red’s baseball and softball.  This place is a sports bar with a lot of tv’s and trophy’s, but if that’s your thing I will add that it really has that community feel that you are lacking from chain restaurants.  It is definitely one of a kind and they seem like the kind of people that would get to know your name if you went a couple times.  If you are curious as to what the other pizza places are see the list here.

12" Margherita Napoletana pizza.

From the menu you can see that pizza is their specialty.  Since I was training for the flying pig half marathon in March I was craving carbs, so I asked the lone waitress what her favorite things on the menu were.  She was a fan of the garlic bread with a side of spaghetti sauce (5$).  This was a house made hoagie bun with cuts on the top loaded with butter and garlic awesomeness.  I also really like their homemade sauce that’s just the right amount of sweetness to it.  The specialty pizzas and sandwiches are made after Cincinnati sports figures and natives (Since I grew up in Wisconsin, I admit that I had cheat here and had to google this one).  The make their own sauce, bread, Italian sausage, mortadella, and “secret dressing”.  The pizzas include the Pizza Bianca (Ala Greg Cook) which is your typical white pizza, the Enrico (Named after their dad) which is a sausage, pepperoni, veggie, and the Home Run (Ala Pat Tabler) which is pep, sausage, bacon lots of veggies, extra cheese and extra sauce.  The home run sounds great to me, but since my friend is a vegetarian most of the time, the waitress suggested the Margherita Napoletana (Queen of Italy) pizza.  A medium 12” margherita pizza (19$) has slices of tomato, garlic, oregano, olive oil, 3 cheese and “secret ingredients”.  I’m always a fan of a margherita pizza and this one didn’t disappoint on taste, with great tomatoes and something in the cheese or secret ingredients that made it really good.  One of the main things that makes the difference in a pizza crust is having it charred on the bottom, which chain places with assembly lines do NOT have.  The oregano, on the other hand, was dry oregano and didn’t blend in with the pizza’s flavor.  Fresh oregano would have had  a more pronounced flavor.  Another thing is, after working in the pizza industry for 4 years, I have been known to take down an entire 12” pizza in one sitting, and then some.  This price for a small pizza with dry oregano on it kinda irritates me.  I went to many other places (A Tavola, Newport pizza, Pomodoris)  with fresh, exotic ingredients that weren’t chains and shopped local, and at every one of them I still paid less than Sorrento’s, so they get low marks for price.   

While this is a pizza experience to put in the books as very tasty and community oriented, I don’t think I’ll be making the trek back anytime soon, especially since there is a top 50 pizza places list I have to try eventually.  I am so looking forward to going out for some awesome pizzas this year!

Teak Thai Cuisine

Sushi #5: Teak – Zombie roll, Who Dey roll, spicy tuna roll, and aged tofu – $30.50

Aged Tofu

Alright, I’m kicking 2 of these out in a row, so we’ll save you the small talk.  If you read these and you like the small talk let me know.  I have a lot going on in life and I like to talk about anything going on so I can look back on this later and say “holy shit, I completely forgot about that thing I did that week!  That was awesome.”  Also, I’ve added a much needed search bar and some fun fish that you can feed to go along with the sushi!!!  Just left click on their tank.

Zombie roll and spicy tuna

Teak is usually rated as one of the best in the city for Thai food.  I live 2 blocks from Teak in Mt. Adams which really makes for an easy walk for some great food!  This is the 8^th sushi review I’m doing from my New Year’s Resolution expand Chris’s horizon’s list.  The previous sushi reviews were for Sung, Miyoshi, Matsuya, and Kyoto.  I’ll say that I have been to Teak before and I am a fan of the Thai dishes there.  The prices are a few bucks more than you’d get over in Hyde Park, but Teak has a bad ass outdoor Patio and soon will have another section of the indoor building opened.  The place really is gigantic!  There is a parking lot for Mt. Adams that is the same as the pay one on the weekend that’s free during the week/Sunday.  The atmosphere is better than some of the other places I’ve been, but not as cool as Sung downtown.  Happily there was no J-pop playing on the radio either.  J  It is also half price wine on Sundays and half price Thai app’s during happy hour Sun-Thurs. 

Who Dey roll.  Very unique presentation.

The menu includes traditional Thai dishes as well as a long sushi list.  There are a few things I have seen on other menu’s such as gyoza dumplings, calamari, spicy octopus, edamame and tempura veggie’s/shrimp.   As an appetizer, my friend and I went with something new, aged tofu (4.50$).  This was new and interesting to me, it was like a tempura tofu, but with these flavorful flakes in the center and this all went well in the ponzu sauce.  I love tempura batter, so I’d get it again for 4.50$.  As far as sushi goes, one of my favorite things about where we sat, against the window by the sushi counter, was the plethora of cool little wooden sushi boats.  Brings back growing up as a little kid at the park in Milwaukee.  I asked what the specialty was that everyone likes and the waiter suggested the Who Dey roll (roll topped with spicy crab mix, an orange slice, and 2 colored masago roe, 12$).  This is the coolest looking rolls up to now in my sushi reviews by far and the crab mix on top was also the best I’ve had.  It took time for them to individually top each piece of the sushi with an orange sliver and 2 kinds of caviar.  We also got a spicy tuna (5.50$), which was one of highest quality I’ve seen of just pieces of tuna topped with a spicy sauce, not a mayo.  The zombie roll (tuna, salmon, whitefish, avocado, masago & scallion roll topped with spicy sauce, 8.50$), again this was not a mayo.  When you look at the price, you have to remember that we fed 2 people on this.  I was happily surprised with the quality and tastiness of my Teak experience, but I have to take them down here for the lack of service.  It was Sunday, and there weren’t that many people in there to have bad service, but it took a long time to prepare, and I ordered extra wasabi and it took 10 minutes for it to come out to the sushi counter, and since we were sitting right next to it we saw it and took it…oops!   Hahaha!  That’s how we roll. 

I think Teak will stay as one of my favorites during this quest due to its good selection, quality, atmosphere/size, and the fact that it’s so close to everyone in the city.  I like that I can walk to it, but that doesn’t shape my opinion seeing as I work all the way out in Florence and am used to driving a half hour for great food.  

Kyoto

Sushi #4: Kyoto – spicy tuna, Kyoto roll, and dragon roll – $24.50

Miso soup

Holy jeez I am behind in this!  It’s been 3 weeks since my last post but an insane amount of life has happened since then.  I mean I did finish my third semester of grad school and did my second half marathon at the 6:30 in the morning…  Have I mentioned how much I hate the morning?  How about 6:30 in the morning?  Ok, then remember I have to eat 2 hours before a 13 mile long race, and let me tell you how much I now hate 4:30 in the morning!  I mean, usually I’m drunk at that point late on a Sunday night in mt. Adams, so you can see where I’m going here.  Anyways, this was my second and it was a beast!  I never really challenged myself and my body like I have been these past few years and since I never ran more than 3 miles non-stop before and I’m finishing my second 13 mile race, you can too.  J  I should probably add that the price you see above is because I eat like a fat man trapped in a skinny man’s body…oh wait, that’s what I am!

           

My friend to my left had a crunchy red snapper,
spicy tuna, and salmon sashimi.  

            Also, I’ve added a much needed search bar and some fun fish that you can feed to go along with the sushi!!!  Just left click on their tank.

Tempura roll

Kyoto had been hyped up for me from some of the reviews I read online, but never trust the critics, me included.  Go out and try shit for yourself I always say!  This is the 7^th review I’m doing this year from my list.  If you’ve missed them, so far I’ve done sushi reviews for Sung, Miyoshi, and Matsuya.  I went with 5 friends for dinner on Thursday, February 23 and had a 25 minute drive out to what my list says is Loveland, wherever the hell that is I don’t know, because I think it falls off of the face of civilization that far outside the city.  Hahaha!  J/k suburbanites, I used to work out there so don’t come and slap me for my jokes.  Kyoto has been one of the more memorable experiences to date of a place I won’t be going back to.  Everything about the atmosphere here was wrong.  It’s out in the strip malls and when you walk in it’s bright, there are cheesy pictures on the walls ( lots of them) and you can’t NOT get irritated by J-pop, our Japanese neighbors version of Justin Beiber and Brittany Spears (I don’t care if I misspelled their names).  Plus, the seats are very close together and there was constant pounding of fish by an assembly line behind me at the sushi counter. 

Spicy tuna, kyoto roll and dragon roll

You’ll find that the menu is rather extensive.  The breadth of the menu I saw online made me think the food here was going to be awesome.  The price tops off at 11-14$ at the most expensive, which is 3$ cheaper per roll than other places for their signature sushi rolls.  I really do like when you get a large variety, because honestly, it’s all the same ingredients, just different people like them put together differently.  I went with the spicy tuna, my measuring stick, (6.95$), Kyoto roll (8.50$ shrimp, tuna, salmon, yellowtail, avo, cuc, masago), and the dragon roll (9.95$ shrimp tempura, cuc, eel, avo, eel sauce).  I liked that they added some garnish and a purple flower to add to the presentation.  They also used ginger that is the real color of ginger root instead of the bright pink stuff.  The spicy tuna is the first thing I tried, and it is kind of right down the middle on quality since it has a mixture of the premade goo, like the cheap places, and fresh pieces of whole tuna, like the high quality places.  I hadn’t seen this mixture yet, so they rate higher than most on quality, but a real spicy tuna should be just whole pieces of tuna with a dollop of spicy mayo on top, not mixed at all, like Matsuya.  For an idea of this go out and try Miyoshi, Jo-An, or green papaya.  I did like the dragon roll which has avocado and eel wrapped around the roll and a shrimp tempura inside.  I was actually disappointed by the Kyoto roll.  Every other place uses a very flavorful roll for their house special, and this one was ok, but not great or memorable. 

Spicy tuna, kyoto roll and dragon roll

If I had a sushi place to go to again this year, Kyoto wouldn’t be it.  If you are looking for a new place for sushi because you’ve been everywhere, or you live in the burbs, then go try it.  Their large selection, cheaper (not the best) prices, but lower quality makes Kyoto fall in the lower middle on this quest for me.