Hello again. Forgive me for absence, will ya? There are notebooks upon notebooks replete with chronicles of my semi-parmed adventures and simply not enough hours in a day to transcribe them all.
Or maybe I’ve just been lazy.
Lazy and a little preoccupied, I suppose. See, I’m getting married and refuse to be nonchalant about it. My friends like to joke that this is really more my wedding than it is Mina’s. I’m gonna go ahead and plead the fifth on that one.
Every weekend we’re working on or at least dwelling upon something wedding related and this past Saturday was no exception. We toured Monmouth County, New Jersey (where our wedding venue is) for potential Rehearsal Dinner spots along with my dear mother. The whole time I annoyed her with my predilection towards a restaurant closer to home while she, probably rightfully, wanted us to try something different. I won’t share who won that one, I guess I’ll have to save it for my inevitable review of my rehearsal dinner, since we all know that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d do.
Although we’d visited several places and had some light appetizers earlier in the day, it was getting to be late and we were hungry and so we headed back north to our part of Central Jersey with no plan for dinner. No plan, that is, until I had an epiphany: we would drive up to the city of my birth, Elizabeth, where we would dine on the best homemade ravioli in the state.
That’s right, we went to Spirito’s.
This cultural institution has been in the news quite a bit recently. There’s rumors that the business is for sale and it had to close temporarily when there wasn’t a manager present with a Serv Safe certification present. But that wasn’t going to deter us.
It doesn’t look like much on the outside and the same is true of the inside. Opened in 1932, it would appear that much hasn’t changed in that time. It’s dimly lit, the walls are all wood panel, and the booths are hard wood and painted the same color green they were for the 30+ years I’ve been coming here.
Spirito’s has charm and character for days. The soda is all flat and syrupy, the waitresses are surly, short, very old, and will NEVER write anything down. If I want to go to the bathroom I have to walk through the kitchen to get there. Something that amazed me as a child but frankly kind of intimidates me as an adult.
I’ve been bringing dates here for years but Mina and I never got a chance. Now was the time.
The way to do things here, in my opinion, is simple. Normally, I insist on pizza for an appetizer which I realize is kind of ridiculous but it’s absolutely necessary. It’s one of the tastiest pies in the state! It’s in my top 5. Good crust, excellent combination of sauce and cheese.
The menu is very simple, made even simpler by virtue of the fact that one MUST get the ravioli in some way, shape, or form. For the last decade or so my strategy has been to order the ravioli as an entree with some kind of meat as a side. The reasoning there is that you get more ravioli that way. It’s sound and solid reasoning if I do say so myself.
But I’m not now nor have I ever been a ravioli expert. With ravioli like this there’s really no need for it. You will NEVER, EVER bite into one like this and experience the incredibly smooth mouthfeel of their creamy ricotta filling. One bite makes you forget that Donald Trump is president and that Joe Biden is somehow a thing again. These ravioli could solve world peace, end systemic racism, institute universal healthcare, and bring about the four day work week. They are HEAVEN.
And today they were my side dish!
I mean, there was no way I wasn’t getting the chicken parm. It’s been YEARS! And let’s face it, I needed the inspiration. I’ve been working on an entry about my trip to New Orleans on and off for months and I needed something to break me out of slump and light a fire under my ass.
Boy, did it deliver.
I hate a thick chicken parm. It misses the point of the dish entirely. But this chicken was pounded to absolute perfection. A truly magnificent chicken parm requires this with an appropriate ratio of sauce to cheese. And this is that dish.
This dingy dungeon of a relic from the Depression Era not only has one of the finest pies and the best ravioli…it is the holy land of chicken parm.
I ate my entire meal in one sitting, no doubt to some degree undoing what had been a solid three weeks of dieting (look, I’m getting married and want dazzle everyone in a nicely fitted tux, ok?). It was worth it.
Everyone needs a break every now and again. Sometimes these breaks last longer than intended. I’ve been wanting to get back to writing about my favorite topic for some time now.
Turns out I just needed to go to Spirito’s.
Semi-Parmed Life 