RED DELI?

I'm giving it a thumbs up. its worth it for the bread. its also dirt cheap. you do have to listen to sublime and bob marley while you're there though.

burrito rollers

i just discovered these little gems the other night. i was hungry and only had a coupla bucks so i walked over to the 7-11 and grabbed a snickers ice cream bar and instead of a hot dog, likei usually get, i decided that i wanted to try one of these. oh man, what a surprise. it actually tasted good. AND CHEAP! i might go get one right now. or 2. my favs are the chicken and cheese ones.

SLAB PIZZA: i'm still not convinced

there was a discussion on my facebook page a few weeks back about slab pizza, its a little place over by BYU campus that caters to cheap BYU students. first off, i'm not a fan. at all. tho, a few friends (ernie and vegor) really like it, and while i will disagree with them on the merits of this pizza i will grant that i haven't tried everything on the menu.
in defense of my stance i will say that my criteria for a pizzeria is their cheese pizza and their pepperoni pizza. the logic i follow is pretty simple: if the cheese pizza sucks, i'll still try the pepperoni. if the pepperoni sucks, i'm done with the place. if a pizzeria can't get either one of those two pizza right, it doesn't make me want to spend time and money on anything else.
that said, slab pizza's cheese pizza sucked. so did their pepperoni. their employees also weren't wearing gloves or hairnets. strikes 1,2, and 3.
don't get me wrong, i tried really hard to like this pizza, but it was just too flavorless. the crust was bland, as was the sauce and cheese. it seemed like no thought at all went into the recipes. i felt like i could have gone to smiths and gotten a prepackaged dough mix with a jar of "pizza" sauce and some hormel pepperoni and gotten the same thing.
i will give props to them for using a brick oven, but for some reason they put a screen underneath the pizza instead of putting it right on the brick. it doesn't seem like they understand the reason for using a brick oven when they cook pizza that way. seems like everything there is kinda backwards.
granted, nicolitalia is one of the most backwards places on earth, but they get the essential things right.
i can understand going cheap on some of the ingredients, that is fine, but why be lazy about a recipe? it won't affect cost margins too much to develop a better sauce or dough recipe when the main cost on a pizza is cheese. if they spent a little extra money on decent cheese and threw a few spices into that pizza sauce it wouldn't be so bad, because at $3.75 for a quarter slice they can still make money, and have a better reputation.

nick on the history of nicolitalia

thanks to the utah peoples post.
http://www.utahpeoplespost.com/news/one-in-120000-nick-the-pizza-guy

loser casserole

so, i'm still eating pretty frugally, occasionally i'll hit up petes on a saturday morning with vegs, ernie, mel, grady and a few others or do some el salvadoran if i got a f ew extra bucks. but lately i've tried to make food more than not. and i include pizza in this, because, you know, i make it. at work. but last night i did something that newlin might actually be ashamed of.
i made a loser casserole.
you might not know what that is, and its cool, because i just made it up.
caveat: i started cooking food for ned. and i usually make him rice, carrots, chicken/chicken stock or some other protein source. he eats better than i do.
so i took some of this rice i made for ned and mixed in some broccoli. then i put some cream of chicken soup in it.
i finished it off with chicken nuggets. i know. i've reached the bottom.
it didn't taste bad, but i was ashamed for the entire 15 minutes i was eating it.

went to pete's today. got some great news.

so we all know how much i love pete's lunch. honestly, its the best breakfast in utah, hands down. no one does it like pete. i took mel and grady this morning because i was off work and i'd been bugging mel to come hang out. since the snowstorm she'd been worried about driving grady around on the typically unplowed UT roads, understandably. so today was super nice, sunny, and a little warmer so we agreed to meet up at pete's for breakfast. we got there around 11 and got my normal table (#9) and ordered. mel got an omelette and i got eggs toast hashbrowns and bacon. grady got milk. i always love the reaction of first timers when they take the first bite, and its usually the same:
"OH MY GOD"
mel was no different. i've yet to find someone who isn't wholly impressed by pete's culinary prowess. so we were eating and today helena was our waitress, but julie happened to be there and walks by and says hello and we chat a bit, and she say, oh, here, you might be interested in this, we're going to be OPEN TIL 7:00 PM NOW, AND WE WILL DO TAKE OUT ORDERS, SO YOU CAN CALL US ANY TIME BEFORE 7:00 AND WE'LL DO IT TO GO.
i almost had a heart attack, not from the food, but fromthe news that now i can get PETE'S FOR DINNER.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i'm as happy as a little girl.
i'm still working on him to get sundays open.
i'd like to think that maybe in some small way i've helped get him a few more customers, enough to warrant this exhilarating news. even if it wasn't me, i'm still happy beyond belief.

HUH? I HAVE A BLOG?

howdy folks, seein as its been about 14 years since i wrote anything, i decided i'd take a break out of my busy schedule and "pen" a few words about some vittles i've had recently.
across from nicolitalia in that little shop that used to be hires big h, and the guanojuato mexican place and probably a few other forgettable restaurants, there is now a greek place, sadaf greek souvlaki. they gots the normal greek fare and big giant beef ribs. pretty damn good. i, of course, only got the gyro because lets be honest, its the benchmark food for small out of the way greek places. it did not fail to please. i'd take it over the other greek place on state street any day. for me its up there with greek souvlaki #1 up in salt lake. the dudes who run it are pretty ok dudes too, which is a plus, i hate goin to places where i can't talk to the owners.