Slice - February 25th, 2012

This week takes us to Slice - a wonderful pizza restaurant in the Lakeview area of Birmingham.  Slice takes pride in using local ingredients for their food and also serves up local beer on draft.   This restaurant is close to Gina's office but she'd never been there but had heard good things about it and noticed it seemed busy.

We were a little early for dinner but there were plenty of other pre-concert (Jimmy Buffett at the BJCC!) diners at Slice.  We opted for the Perfect Pepperoni pizza with Good People IPA (draft) for Jay and Shiner Bock for Gina.  They had an extensive beer menu with lots of choices at very reasonable prices.  There were some good appetizer and salad options but we thought pizza and beer was the perfect pre-concert meal.

The pizza did not disappoint.  It was straight out of the stone oven and cooked to perfection.  The sauce was a slightly sweet red sauce with plenty of pepperoni and cheese.  The 12 inch pizza was perfect to share.  They have a lot of other pizza options that we'd like to try such as the Old School, BBQ, and Super Cheese.  We'll definitely make it back to Slice when our plans take us to the downtown area again.  Gina is also planning to try Slice at lunch as their website recommends the slice of the day with salad.

Famous Fred - February 18th, 2012

This week we ordered take out from Famous Fred's here in Hoover off Hwy 31 in the Books a Million shopping center just behind Chick Fil A.  We got chicken tender baskets to go.  The chicken tenders are made fresh for you after you order.  Apparently there are some Greek food items like gyros and baklava but we ordered ahead without the benefit of a menu on the recommendation that we'd like the chicken tenders.  And we did!

The chicken tender basket has a HUGE portion of chicken tenders.  They are larger than nuggets and shorter than fingers.  The basket comes with fries, a biscuit and their sauce which seems like a mayo/ketchup mix and is a little zesty.  Gina could not finish the fries or the chicken which made Zuma (our Abyssinian cat!) very happy as she has a thing for chicken tenders.

We'll add this to the rotation when we are looking for good takeout chicken.  Not sure that they'll top Zaxby's as our favorite, but they are a close second.

GianMarco's - February 11th, 2012

This week we headed out to a nice dinner to celebrate Valentine's Day a few days early.  We picked GianMarco's in Homewood due to the rave reviews it gets from absolutely everyone.  Jay made reservations about a month ago so that we would be ensured of having a reservation before the Alabama Symphony Orchestra with Windborne and the music of the Eagles concert.

We arrived at 6 and were seated at a nice 4 top table with a great view of the rest of the restaurant.  GianMarco's is a fairly small, elegant, white-tablecloth, Italian restaurant in Homewood.  It definitely lived up to the hype. We started out with a bottle of Barbera which is our favorite varietal of Italian wine.  The menu was quite extensive and we'd peeked at it ahead of time and had a pretty good idea of what we were going to order even before arriving for the meal.  However, all of that went out the window when we heard the specials of the evening.  Just hearing about the specials was mouth-watering.  Gina decided on the Linguine Fradiavlo with seafood (lobster, shrimp, mussels, calamari) and Jay went with the Veal Osso Bucco.  We started with pan fried calamari and Jay had the tomato and fresh mozzarella salad.    Our entrees were heavenly!

We somehow managed to save a little room for dessert.  Jay had New York style cheesecake and Gina had chocolate bread pudding with chocolate gelato.  Jay had a tawny port with his dessert while Gina enjoyed a cappuccino.  All in all this was a fantastic meal with wonderful service.  This is a little fancier (and pricier) than we usually choose but for a special occasion, it was perfect. 

Davenport's Pizza Palace - February 4th, 2012

This weekend we decided to go to Davenport's in Mountain Brook village to try their famous pizza.  It wins all sorts of local awards and was busy today at lunchtime.  This is your classic "pizza joint" with red and white or green and white checkered tablecloths and great pizza.  We shared a medium meat lover's (ham-pepperoni-sausage) pizza.  The pizza had a thin and tasty crust and lots of red sauce piled high with meat and cheese.  One interesting thing that we like is that the pizza is cut into very tiny pieces.    This worked out great because Gina prefers crust while Jay prefers the inside pieces.

This was a nice change from our usual takeout from Papa Murphy's - which we love, and we can understand why so many folks love Davenports...  However, if we were going "all the way over" to Mountain Brook village, we'd go to Mafiaoza's in Crestline Village for our "Last Request"  pizza.