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Friday, June 17, 2011

Rick's Italian Restaurant in Lambertville, NJ

When I go out to eat, I want it to be an amazing experience.  The food has to be fresh, tasty, and the service good to great.  I avoid chain restaurants at all costs.  There are so many independent restaurants out there, it would take forever to try them all.

In Lambertville, NJ I usually go to Siam.  Siam's looks like an abandoned building with seating for only 50 at full capacity.  Siam is Thai and it is always good.  It's a guaranteed amazing.

But, I am expanding my dining experience, so I looked up Italian food in that area.  Lambertville, NJ is right next to New Hope, PA and is an old beautiful town with houses dating back to the 1800's.  Walking around the town is part of the dining experience.

Rick's is a BYOB, and I am a huge fan of such places.  The markup on wine at restaurants is over 200%, so a quick stop at the wine store is fine by me.

Ricks menu is small, another indication of great food.  They have the usual parmigiana veal, chicken, and eggplant, but they also offer tofu parmigiana, that's unheard of!  They have meatballs, sausage, and lasagna as well.

The specials for the night included  baby octopus, crab cake parmigiana, and  antipasto for two.

My husband ordered the veal parmigiana,  his favorite Italian dish.  I wanted to order the crab cakes, but decided on the shrimp over linguine with olive oil and fresh garlic.

The reason I did not get the crab cakes was because it is an Italian restaurant and I wanted to order totally Italian.

We were asked if we wanted to sit inside or out and being a beautiful night, before it gets so humid you can't stand it, we opted for outside.  It was so cute, we were escorted through the indoor dining area and then through the kitchen to the outside patio.  The kitchen staff said hi to us when we passed through.  I thought it was another indication of good food as they had nothing to hide!

We were served a pitcher of ice water and a basket of bread with fresh butter, plus a small dish containing pureed white beans mixed with fresh garlic and olive oil so we could dip our bread.  It was so different and delicious, we ordered another basket of bread.

They offered to open our wine and supplied us with wine glasses.  The outside patio was small and quaint with a four top, two two tops, and an eight top.

We sat on white lawn chairs.

Our dinner arrived within 15 minutes of being seated.  My husband's veal was perfectly cooked and had fresh roasted tomatoes and mozzarella cheese melted on top, without being over whelming.  I tasted it and it was delicious.

My shrimp over linguine was amazing.  I received 5 jumbo shrimp that were cooked exactly they way shrimp should be cooked, chewy, not stringy.  I tasted fresh basil, garlic, and the olive oil was just enough without overbearing the pasta.

We also had a side of spaghetti with tomato sauce that had the same fabulous roasted fresh tomato sauce as the veal my husband ordered.

I will definitely be going back to Rick's to try all the other dishes they have to offer.

 

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