Ristorante Il Latini - Florence, Italy

The crowd outside of Il Latini
(This is only a small part of it) 

This is my first review of a restaurant outside of the United States, and it's for a great place!  My family and I traveled to Italy for two weeks and I wrote about everything on the trip, including the restaurants, in a journal my parents bought for me! Before the trip we were searching the internet for amazing restaurants to go to while on our trip, and my dad stumbled upon Ristorante Il Latini in Florence, Italy. It sounded like a great place online, and everyone in our family became super-duper excited to go to this restaurant - so my dad made reservations for us several months before the trip! During the trip, it was one of the stops my family was looking forward to the most.  For dinner on our second day in Florence we took a cab to the long-awaited Il Latini. The road in front of the restaurant was absolutely PACKED!!! Outside in the street there were way too many people crammed into way too small of a space waiting to get in.  The road actually was not small, but it certainly felt like it.  If you are thinking of going there, make SURE you have a reservation, because if you don't you will NOT get in.  But if you do, you are in for a real treat.

When you walk into Il Latini, the first thing you notice is the ceiling. But this is no ordinary ceiling, no, this is a celling full of hanging hams!!! No, I am not kidding, but there seriously must be at least 50 hams hanging from the ceiling!! My brother absolutely LOVES meat, and we he was really excited!!! One of the things that makes Il Latini so unique is that there is no menu. You get what you get, and I can assure you that you won't be upset. The first course for us was melon with some super-yummy, meaty,  prosciutto. At first I was skeptical about putting fruit and meat together, but once I tried it, I thought it was pretty good! I mean, who would've thought that some fruit and some meat together (A pretty weird combination if you ask me) tasted so good? Not me!! After we finished off the first course, out came the second: toasted bread with chicken liver! When it came out, I didn't know what it was, and my dad told me it was beef, because that's what

My brother and I enjoyed our prosciutto!

it looked like. Little did I know he was kidding and took a big bite. Yuck!! I like almost everything, but liver is one of the few things I don't like. It's really good if you like liver, but if you don't, not so much.  My dad really liked it.  We then had a "tuscan salad" that we all really liked.

When the next course came out, we had three different kinds of pasta - ravioli, penne bolognese and one in particular that caught my eye.  I was told that it was gnocchi with a rabbit sauce. Now, I had never had rabbit meat before, but I was assured that it would be good. However, after my liver experience I wasn't sure, but...they were wrong... It was AMAZING!!! The rabbit was gamey, which was nice, the gnocchi was cooked to perfection (a little crispy, a little soft ), and the warm sauce just brought it all together. In my journal, I described it as "One of the best things I have ever eaten". If that tells you anything, it was pretty darn amazing! So amazing in fact, I stole some of my brother's gnocchi!! After that we had the meat course - a huge plate of meat!   They brought veal, steak, chicken, lamb and pork.  I love steak, but only get it once in a while, and this was excellent!  It was really juicy, and cooked medium rare, just the way I like it! Mmmmmm.......just thinking about all this food is making me hungry!! But seriously, I can promise you that is one of the best steaks you will ever have!

A group picture!
Grandma Carol, Mom, Dad, my brother and me.

On to dessert!! For our final course, we had a platter of different desserts. I wanted the Strawberry Tart, Biscotti, and Chocolate Cake. The desserts came with some warm chocolate sauce that I put around each desert on my plate. To make it fair, we split up all the desserts and we each got a little taste of each one. The strawberry tart was really good, the tart being flaky and crispy, and the filling sweet and fruity.  The biscotti was so good, it was almost as if it had just come out of the oven. It was warm, and had a really great texture to it. The chocolate cake was very rich, and had a chocolate ganache on the top that was exquisite!!

The staff was really great, and they were very impressed when we started having conversations with them in Italian.   We had studied Italian at home before the trip and had a lot of fun talking in Italian with people there.

All in all, this is definitely one of the best meals I have ever eaten, and would go back in a heartbeat. If you happen to be in Florence, and happen to have a reservation for Il Latini, be prepared for the meal of you life!!

As always, I will be rating the places I go on my Cookie Counter Scale of Cookiness, with 1 cookie being  burnt, old, stale oatmeal raisin nastiness, and 10 cookies being a perfect, warm, gooey chocolate chip (my favorite) goodness. My Cookie Counter ratings for Il Latini are:

Food: 12 Cookies (that's right - 12!)
Atmosphere: 9 Cookies
Service: 9 Cookies

Il Latini's Website: http://www.illatini.com

The Cheesecake Factory-Boca Raton,FL

Those AWESOME Pot Stickers!

Just today, my family and I went out to brunch at The Cheesecake Factory for my grandparent's 50th Anniversary! When we were thinking of a place to go, The Cheesecake Factory came up, and we all decided that it sounded good to us. We got there pretty early, so there weren't many people there. One of the great things about The Cheesecake Factory is that even if it's morning, you can get whatever you want! Knowing that the entire menu was open, I began searching for things that sounded good to me. As I was looking through the menu, something caught my eye - Chicken Pot Stickers!!!! I absolutely love pot stickers, and could probably eat them all day, so I decided to get an order of those. I knew I also wanted pancakes, but there were just so many choices! After a few minutes, I decided to try something new and go with the Lemon Ricotta Pancakes. These were pancakes in which lemon zest and ricotta cheese had been mixed in with the batter. My dad got the Bang-Bang chicken and shrimp, my grandma got the Pasta Da Vinci, my brother got the Brunch Combo, my mom got the Asian Salad, my other grandma got an Omelet, and my grandpa got the Baja Chicken Hash.

 

Me and my pancakes!

Before anyone had their entree, we all split the Chicken Pot Stickers. They were even better than I expected! They were very juicy, and crunchy on the outside of the wonton, but soft on the inside! Very good, but the sauce was pretty salty. Soon after we had finished off the Pot Stickers, our entrees were served.  The size of the pancakes was impressive - I felt like they were the size of my head, and there were three of them!!! My pancakes were kind of tangy, but at the same time kind of sweet. They were ok, and after a few bites, I was too full to eat any more. Overall I didn't like them as much as I had hoped.  I also tried my grandma's Pasta Da Vinci. That was really good!! It had mushrooms, chicken, and onions with penne pasta all tossed together in a beautiful Madeira Wine sauce. It was like comfort food, to a degree. It was exquisite!

BEST CHEESECAKE EVER!

     At the end of the meal, although everyone wanted cheesecake, we were all too stuffed to eat it right then, so we decided to take it home. So my grandma and I went up to the big display case that held about 30 different kinds of cheesecake, and after discussing our options, opted for a slice of S'mores Cheesecake, and a whole Adam's Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple Cheesecake. Once we got home, we dug in. Like OMG this stuff was THE BEST CHEESECAKE EVER!!! The S'mores cheesecake was my favorite, even though it didn't really taste like cheesecake. It was like a super-rich and super-moist chocolate cake that someone decided would be better with a marshmallow on top! And they were right!! The sugar high was awesome.  For all chocolate fans, this one's a must-get! The Adam's Peanut Butter Cup Fudge Ripple cheesecake was really good too, but it didn't come together as nicely as the S'mores did. I really liked the peanut butter frosting on top, and the chocolate went really well with it, but I personally think that it should be a cake, not a cheesecake. I mean, the cheesecake kind of ruined the whole dessert which is really a shame because otherwise, it could have been a super-great dessert.

As always, I will be rating the places I go on my Cookie Counter Scale of Cookieness, with one being burnt, stale oatmeal raisin nastiness, and ten being perfect chocolate chip (my favorite) goodness. My Cookie Counter Ratings for Cheesecake Factory are:

Food: 6
Atmosphere: 5
Service: 7.5

Until Next Time, Keep Cooking!

Cheesecake Factory's Website: http://www.thecheesecakefactory.com