Restaurant Review

Pronto Cucinino
1401 Montrose

Review in 5 words or less? Turd. Italian TV dinner.

Full review.

An offshoot of the fine Nino's, Vincents and Grappino di Nino complex off West Dallas and promising quality food in a quick environment, I was intrigued. On a lazy night, Mrs. Oilman and I jump into the petromuncher and drove the four blocks to this new establishment.

Order entry, payment, service, blah, blah, blah. Let's get to the food. That is the most important thing, isn't it?

Fried buffalo mozzarella appetizer. With marinara. I could eat thirty of these things. The incredibly clean taste of the buffalo mozzarella with it's lightly fried shell is just something else. But then fried cheese. How can you mess that up? Especially with good cheese. And this was.

Now for the downfall. I ordered the parmesan crusted chicken breast with a side of spinach sautéed with garlic.

The chicken is a low budget knockoff of Veal Vincent, the parmesan crusted veal at Nino's. Funny thing about this one, though. It was not fresh. It was obviously reheated. I'm starting to feel some doubt about this place now. Precooked and reheated entree's? That's just not right, especially from such a famous food family.

The side dish was worse. Supposedly it was spinach sautéed with garlic. My ass. That was boiled and pressed spinach tossed with precooked garlic. There was no hint of olive oil on the spinach at all. The garlic, given the size of the slices, was limp and cold. This Italian knows how to sauté a damn spinach and garlic together and knows what it is supposed to taste like. I could have bought a can of Popeye's for a fraction of the price and been equally satisfied. Utterly pathetic.

For the thing they actually cooked on premises (fried cheese) this is a pretty good place. For anything else that has any chance at all of being precooked, forget it. And forget this turd of a restaurant.