Monday, September 19, 2011

Restaurant Review: Como Deli

Since I dragged my family to Erie, PA, to shiver in the "cold" (perfect running weather, not-so-perfect-spectating weather), it's only right that we all do something together as a family, and since we were 2/3 of the way to an amazing natural wonder, it would be a shame to miss out on Niagara Falls.

But the Falls aren't the topic of this post. The topic is food.

When we are on trips, we generally enjoy trying new places, especially local restaurants (as opposed to chains). So at the Niagara Falls information desk (where the guy told us to save our money on the "package deal" because it wasn't going to be worth it for us - who says New Yorkers are rude?), we asked the guy (who  incidentally looked like he was someone who would know) where we should go to eat. He started with the nearby "touristy" places, but we asked him where he would eat. He directed us to Little Italy on Pine Street, where we found The Como Restaurant.

Well, we actually found the Como Deli, which is the fast side of the Restaurant. We didn't exactly know what to order, but the woman behind the counter was extremely friendly and showed us what they had. We chose a Manicotti dinner which had two huge Manicottis (is there a correct plural for Manicotti? Or is that the plural of Manicotto?) - one cheese (for Tara) and one meat (for me). It came with two sides, so she had a meatball and I had an Italian sausage. At our request, she drenched the whole thing with sauce. The kids went with pizza and shells with red sauce.

The food was fantastic. It was out-of-this-world good. It was come back and eat here every day good. It was move into the neighborhood and beg for a job there so I can eat it more frequently good.

And what made it even better was the staff. It seemed like they greeted almost all of their customers by name and were extremely friendly. When we asked what a particular dessert was, they gave us a couple of them. Free. And when our boys saw a little girl eating a cookie and wanted their own cookies, and we sent Andrew to the counter to buy a couple. They wouldn't take his money and gave him several cookies. And more when he went back for another (and still they wouldn't take his money).

This was one of the best restaurant experiences I can remember.

(for full-disclosure purposes, they did give us free desserts and free cookies for the boys, and the meal was so horribly underpriced that we thought they had possibly forgotten to ring something up - like "cheaper than McDonalds" priced - but nobody from the restaurant staff had any clue that I was going to write a review and they probably won't read this but that's fine)

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