An old friend and his girlfriend were in town for the day. As we were going to dinner in an undisclosed location in the North end for Palazzo’s birthday, he was secretly invited along as a surprise.

Let me start by saying that I have eaten dog food. I eat everything on my plate, and sop up whatever’s left with bread. I eat nearly everything and anything, and actually enjoy pancakes with tuna fish on them. I am not picky. I am, however, the harshest of restaurant critics. If I say it’s good, it’s probably good. If I a place merely an “ok,” most people I know will look at me like I just spit on the Queen.

Let me say next that Boston’s North End, although a large Italian enclave, is an expensive tourist trap. It is wall to wall restaurants, for blocks and blocks. They will put a restaurant for 3 people in, if they have a spare bedroom in the basement to convert. Despite this, I have yet to have a fantastic meal in the North End. Mostly, I’ve eaten pasta drenched in garlic to make me think that Boston must have a vampire problem, made to fool white bread Midwesterners into thinking that they have eaten Eye-talian food. Yes, garlic is a part of Italian cooking, but it is not the only part.

Palazzo wanted to go to Prezza. Prezza wasn’t actually an Italian restaurant, which was an interesting choice for the North End. It was priced in the $25-30 per plate range, and had the furnishings to actually pull it off. It looked like a really upscale place. The food was fancy and served on square plates, complete with dribblings of various goos and colors.

Unfortunately, looks aren’t everything. I had duck and duck liver pate. I had the same thing at Tosca’s two days before. I was comparing apples to apples. There was nothing wrong with the prezza food. It was a solid $13 meal. At $40, they lost me. I sat thinking, “If this was free, would I like it better? Do I not like it because it’s not worth $40?” The answer was, “No.” For $13, it was edible. At $40, it was edible. But, at $40, it’s a joke. On me. And everyone who walks into the place. They don’t sell food at Prezza, they sell a feeling. That feeling is called “pretension.”

So, if all the coke has completely ruined your sense of taste, and you like hobnobbing with 40+ singles in an upscale atmosphere, and you feel the need to spend $50pp: Prezza is the place to be for you, my friend. If your sense of taste is in tact, and you do the coke simply to make more money to eat in expensive restaurants: Skip the trap. Go to Tosca’s. If you don’t have the money for coke, and want a good value, go to Vinny Testa’s. If you hate Italians because the ripped off the Greeks, get some pizza from Christo’s or Copeland Pizza. If you wanna the free meal in the winter, come on a my house, my house a come on. I make a you the sauce from a the scratch.

Let me finish by saying that Montillio’s Bakery in Quincy, will out cannoli the world famous Mike’s Pastry any day of the week. And that’s the truth.

Oh crap. What? Ok. Ok. Ow. owowowowow. Ok ok. Um, Vinny (whisper whisper) I mean “Dinny” suggests that I might be mistaken about the North End (whisper whisper) and that the restaurants are “real good like.”

Posted in Food