Guantonio's!!!

It was smiller's birthday so I let him choose the restaurant (I let him choose once a year). He chose Guantonio's. I'm just going to assume you've been, if not go directly outside, get in your car and go there. Oh, who am I kidding, it's only open a few hours a week! Seriously, it has some of the most limited hours around, 14 hours open per week. We got there on a Wednesday at 545 and got a table right away. I have waited more than an hour in the past but have gotten lucky the last couple of times. You can either try to get lucky or if you don't mind eating later, I think going at 7 you'd almost always get a seat. Or also if you don't mind sitting at the teeny seats by the pizza oven.

The nice thing about waiting is you can drink some beer or wine while you wait, and you end up chatting with folks.

Above is a meat salad. I almost didn't get it but I was like anchovy? rice powder? Sounds up my alley. OMG it was the best thing I've maybe eaten all year. It was so creative, so bright, fun textural elements. Every time I go I saw that Nick should write a cook book. The meat was room temp, chewy spare ribs. The anchovy added a fish sauce element. It had pluot, mint and Italian parsley, Armenian cukes. It was firing on all cylinders!! Oh yeah, and fennel.

Watermelon and tomato salad why is this underlined sigh blogger. This had another interesting use of Italian parsley where you would expect mint or basil. Pickled red onions too it was bomb.

Nardellos!!!!!!!!!!! They had some parm or pecorino shaved on top and a very savory sauce that I think had tomatillo? And something crunchy like breadcrumbs. I was licking up the sauce.

Then the pizza, again Scott's choice as he was the birthday boy. Corn and green tomatoes. Although I prefer a tomato sauce pie, the green tomatoes almost counted.

The only disappointment for me was I didn't want to get wine by the glass because it was almost all Lodi or surrounding area wine, and I want to drink Euro wine but I mean, look where it's located. They have really good beer too but they had nothing at all on draft at the moment. But that's ok cuz I was driving. I love Guantonio's!!!