Date night at the Colesseo Ristorante Italiano

   
    ♫♫ When the moon hits your eye like a big Pizza pie...


How many of you just sung  ♪ That's Amore ♪ either out loud or in your head??

Somethings will never go out of style, and just like that classic Dean Martin song, when it's date night, and I'm really craving pizza, one of the first places that pops into mind for me in this city is The Colesseo Restaurant on Corydon Ave.

Now Corydon Ave itself has always been a go to for my wife and I. We are both self proclaimed "people watchers", and I find that on a beautiful summers night that we always end up walking up and down the avenue checking out the scene.

This particular night, we parked down the west end of the avenue (on Lilac Street), and enjoyed a nice stroll down the strip, until we came to that iconic entrance

         

www.colosseo.ca

   For me the Colesseo Ristorante is more than just great food, I love the overall pageantry of the place. The Water fountain, the tiled doorway. the elaborate art work on the walls and behind the bar, right down to the white table cloths and the napkin stuffed wine glasses, the atmosphere alone makes you feel like you are about to sit down for a dinner in Italy.

This night my Wife and I decide to enjoy our meal outdoors. As you know there are only 2 main seasons in Winnipeg, Winter and Patio and with the terrific summer we are having we weren't about to miss a second of it by eating indoors .

Our waitress comes with our menus, and asks if we want anything to drink to start, only a pitcher of sangria will do on a beautiful evening such as this. The waitress leaves to put in our drink order, and my wife and I start the joyful conversation of catching up with each other with out any interruptions from little children while we flip through the menu. One of the waiters comes by with a pitcher of water, he quickly fills a glass for each of us and quietly slips away. 

Shortly after, our waitress returns with our Sangria, she pours us each a glass, and asks if we have made our choice for dinner. I always enjoy flipping through their menu. 12 pages of what feels to me like every Italian dish ever made, and even if the main ingredients in the dish are something you don't normally eat, the names of the dishes alone like pollo alla principesa or scaloppine picatta lambata (try saying those and not doing an Italian accent at the same time 😊) make you want to order the dish none the less, but on this night we were here for pizza , and the winner form the speciality pizza list tonight was the Mediterrano. After a resounding review of our choice by our waitress, she hurried off to get our order into the kitchen, and after a glass of the sangria and some more delightful conversation our food was placed in front of us.

The Mediterrano is a delicious pizza topped with spinach, onions, tomatoes, feta cheese, and chicken. I know... onions on a pizza when I'm on a date?? Well 1) My wife and I have been together for 14 years, so I know she always has mints in her purse, and 2) This pizza tastes so absolutely incredible that you might even be willing to give up that end of the night kiss just to eat it ... maybe lol

The evening continued perfectly from there. I moved to the other side of the table so I could sit by my wife and watch the people as they came and went along Corydon. We enjoyed our pizza, we told stories, we topped up each others drinks until the pitcher was empty, the wait staff came quietly by and cleaned are plates as we finished them, and topped up our water glasses as needed, our waitress stopped by to make sure that our meal was to our satisfaction and to make sure that we were still doing OK through the course of the evening. It was a true Italian dining experience of great food and great conversation taking place over a couple of hours.

Once the food and drinks were gone, we wrapped up our conversation, I paid the bill, and we spent the rest of the night walking around Corydon and the surrounding streets, checking out the people, the music, and the architecture that surrounds our Little Italy.

Please do yourself a favour, and check out the Colesseo Ristorate. Make sure you bring your appetite and give yourself plenty of time to enjoy the ambiance, the food,  and the conversation that will surround you that afternoon, or evening

If you like what you have read today, please follow me at awateats on both twitter, and Instagram. 

Feel free to share the link with your friends and family, and if there is a local place that you would like me to check out for you first or you think it is just so great that I  have to go then please let me know in the comment section below or again on either twitter or Instagram. 

Enjoy your day 

AWAT

The Power of Food

Well it's been a while my friends, but it is time to get back at it. I apologize for being away so long.

It's funny that no matter how busy life gets...husband, father of 4, friend, retail manager, there is always one constant that keeps me grounded, brings me back to reality, calms me down after a bad day, makes a good day into a great day, and that's food. Now, it's not the I need to sit down and eat a family size bag of potato chips to myself type of food experience that I am talking about, It is the excitement of seeing a new recipe I want to try on one of the social media platforms, it's watching The Food Network with my family, it's going out to a new restaurant or food truck that we haven't tried before, and last and most importantly of all, it is cooking for my friends and family.

The power of food to bring people together has had an over-whelming effect on me. When I think about it, I think back to my childhood and to the importance of the Sunday dinner. This had many different forms over the years, from those "special treat" Sundays where my parents would let us eat dinner downstairs in the recroom and we would put on the CBC on channel 2 and they would  let us watch the Disney Sunday Movie as a family, to a time where my sister and I had just recently moved out and started our own separate families, so the Sunday dinner became the time where we all got back together around my parents dinning room table and caught up with each others lives.

One of wonderful thing about the Sunday dinner was the different variety of guests that would join us around the table. From Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and Grandparents to friends and co-workers, all ages, all different backgrounds, the Dinner table was a place to eat, to drink, to break bread, to share ideas and opinions, to debate, to laugh and to enjoy. Jokes were told, world issues were solved, and heated debates carried out until the dinner plates were cleared.

Like everything in life, things change things adapt. My parents eventually retired and moved out of the city. This made the Sunday dinner a little more challenging, but as our adult lives evolved so did the new version of the Sunday dinner. It wasn't specifically on Sundays anymore, and now it wasn't primarily at my Parents place. Family gatherings now became the new Sunday dinner.. Birthday parties, Holidays, Super Bowl parties, these were the new get togethers, and wow how they have grown. What use to be 4 - 10 people around the dinner table has now flourished into 20- 30 people occupying all areas of the house, eating, talking, debating, joking and laughing, with different topics of converstion from one room to the next.

The faces have changed over the years, some friends have come and gone, some family have come and gone as well, but the power of food to bring people together hasn't changed. It allows us to live in that moment, it makes us feel like we have never been apart, it lets us feel safe,  that our opinions do matter,  that there is always someone to listen, and that what ever may be going wrong in your life just doen't matter right now, because the feeling of being part of this event just feels so right .

So, If it's alright with everybody, I'd like to invite you into my world of food, to have all of you join me at my virtual dinner table. I will share some of my favorite recipes, review some of the local restaurants and smaller unknown grocery stores, and we will have a few dinner table debates over some of the topics of the day.

Please follow me on twitter @awateats  and look for me on instagram under awateats as well

I look forward to sharing this journey with all of you

Awat

Hard work deserves a reward :-)

        So lately I have been working hard to try and get rid of some of the weight that I put on while I was hibernating over this extra long winter that we've been having, and my mission to eat and live healthy has turned into a family mission. We have included into our lives such things as gym memberships, almond milk, granola, and multi grain everything, and we have done a fairly good job of sticking to our healthy regiment and we both have seen the results we wanted. However going cold turkey from all the decidant foods that we use to eat before has been very difficult, and since we both have worked soooooo hard lol,

We decided to treat ourselves 

http://fiveguys.ca/en

Now there are a couple of things that a restaurant can do that in my mind make it one of the best.

1) Anything resembeling the classic diner look is always a win

 

2) A fun environment

free peanuts

thank you wall from cusomers (done in crayon of course)

3) And of course fresh made food!!

Now how can you go wrong with a place that the "standard" burger comes with 2 patties made from 100% fresh beef, and the "little hamburger" on the menu is the single.

 If you decide to order your bacon burger the way I did with all the standard fixins... mayo, lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, ketchup and mustard, all that you have to say to the smiling face behind the counter, is that you want your burger "ALL THE WAY", but in case you feel that your burger could use a few more toppings, you have several more ingredients that you can add such as relish, onions, jalepeno peppers, green peppers, A1 steak sauce, bar-b-q sauce, and last but not least hot saue. Combine your amazing creation with one of your favorite Coke products and a regular or large serving of their Five Guy or Cajun style fries (cooked in pure, no cholesterol, tasty peanut oil) and your perfect reward dinner is complete.

Well no regrets after this amazing meal, it was the perfect celebration meal, but its time to put down the laptop, and hit the treadmill and get back on my quest to be ready for summer.

If you have a place that you  are passionate about that you would like to see me blog on, or if you are just curious about a restaurant, and would like me to try it out for you first, please comment on this blog or reach out to me on Twitter at @awat56