91. Amici Miei
This was going to be my review:
SERIOUSLY?
Then I figured that you, the people of the Internet, would want more. Really there isn’t much more I can give you. I’m honestly shocked that this place is on the top 100 list, albeit far down the list. If it is on there, Food Food at the 9:30 club, Al’s Pizza and my kitchen should all be on the list ahead of it.
Potomac (or Rockville as it strangely is classified) is not really know for it’s culinary achievements, but I was hoping that Amici Miei would be a nice ladies’ lunch type of place. Which is why we ladies (me, my mom and our buddy Pam) tried the place out. It was a bad sign that when we sat down, Pam told us that she had been there before and described it as “meh”. We started off with a bruschetta topped with tomatoes that were not only not marinated long enough, but they were nowhere near ripe. Luckily, I don’t like tomatoes so it was no skin off my nose. For the main course, Mom and Pam both ordered the pasta carbonara, which is in my opinion, the universal crowd pleaser. You have to try pretty hard to mess up pasta tossed with egg yolks, cheese and bacon. Amazingly, they did. Somehow, even though there was a ton of bacon on the dish, the pasta really had no taste. Adding a fair amount of salt and pepper helped, but then it really just tasted like salt and pepper. I tried one of their mini pizzas—which were probably better suited for moderately hungry friends to share. The one I ordered was the Diavolo, with spicy salami, mozzarella and roasted red peppers. There was a layer of grease so thick on top that had we not been given cloth napkins, I would have totally pulled the anorexic girl move of blotting off the grease with my napkin. The pizza tasted like fine pizza, but the crust was nowhere near crispy enough to hold up the meager toppings. I’ve had better pizza out of a freezer.
Finally, the restaurant was not exactly a comfortable experience. We were seated at a booth that was so tight, I had to put my purse on the floor in the middle of the walkway. Even by the time we left, none of the tables in the middle of the restaurant were full, but every group was shoved in to a tiny booth. So my final thought on Amici Miei is the same as my first one, seriously, Washingtonian?
