D’Amico Kitchen

Hurray again for Restaurant Week! This time, Debbie, her husband and I had made plans to check out D’Amico Kitchen. One thing nice about their Restaurant Week menu is that they offered several choices for each course. They all looked amazing, so I wasn’t sure how I was going to choose!

Debbie and I got there early and decided to wait at the bar until her husband arrived. What is it with the wait staff this week? Not only did we sit for a good 5 minutes before being acknowledged (Debbie says it was more like 10 minutes), but then, the bartender acted like we were completely inconveniencing him. The bar wasn’t even full! I’m not sure what his deal was - maybe he was just having a bad day…but still….

Debbie’s husband arrived shortly after we received our drinks. We were glad to leave the bar area behind and head to the dining room in hopes of better (or at least nicer) service! The hostess ushered us downstairs to a table along the wall. The D’Amico space is kind of hard to describe. The upstairs is bright and sleek with a modern black & white décor. In contrast, the lower level is very dark with an occasional dim light glowing above the tables in the center of the room. A couple of those tables were stark white and looked like something taken from an English castle with oversized chairs to match. I was kind of sad that we didn’t get to sit at one of those tables – oh well, maybe next time.

The waitress (who WAS very nice!) came with a basket of warm bread and proceeded to walked us through a description of the menu. From her recommendation, I started with the Puree of Cauliflower Soup with Brussels Sprout & Truffle. The soup was thick and creamy with rich, earthy undertones from the truffle oil. The sliced brussels sprout on top made for a beautiful presentation, but it didn’t add anything to the soup. In fact, it kind of detracted from it. The sprout leaves were on the underdone side, and the texture of them was a rude interruption to the smooth, decadent soup.

For my main course, I settled on the Orecchietti with Spicy Lamb Sausage, Chickpea & Olive. I’m usually not a “big bowl of pasta” kind of girl, but I couldn’t pass up a dish that contained lamb, chickpeas and kalamata olives. The perfectly done pasta had just the right amount of spice and salt thanks to the delicious house-made lamb sausage and the olives. What about the chickpeas? For how much I adore chickpeas, I unfortunately have to say they just didn’t add to the dish. It seemed they were thoughtlessly thrown in because it’s an ingredient often used with lamb and kalamatas. I say replace the chickpeas with sun dried tomatoes – their chewy sweetness would have added some further interest to an already delightful dish.

My meal ended with the Steamed Chocolate Spice Cake with Amarene Cherries and Olive Oil Gelato. The cake was incredibly rich with a near molten center and was complemented nicely by the sweet cherries. I couldn’t really detect the “spice” part though….but I didn’t care. The rich chocolatiness more than make up for whatever spice I couldn’t taste. Same with the olive oil gelato. I honestly thought it was vanilla until I re-read the menu, but it still added another level of sweetness to an already over-indulgent cake!

Service (again) was a bit off at the end of our meal. Our waitress kind of disappeared, and it was a good 20 minutes after we had finished dessert before she finally came back to ask if we were ready for our check.

And one final thing – I always order coffee with dessert, and I was shocked to see I was charge $3.50 for a cup! Really??? It was decent coffee, but not $3.50 decent! I didn’t even get a refill since our waitress failed to check on us until long after we were done with dessert! Debbie made me feel better by telling me to think that I just paid $7.50 for parking and got a free cup of coffee. Somehow, that did make me feel a bit better about this rip off…..

So, as not to end on a completely negative note, I really did enjoy my meal D’Amico Kitchen. I do feel like it warrants a second visit though as perhaps I just visited on an off night.

Additional Details:
1. Website: http://www.chambersminneapolis.com
2. Again, one of my favorite places to park downtown! The best place to park is in the ramp on the corner of 10th and Hennepin. It only cost us $4 to park here!