Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Foodie Wednesday: Arthur Avenue

As a continuation of Mother's Day after the Bronx Zoo we picked up Tim's wife Christine and drove over to Ann & Tony's restaurant on Arthur Avenue.

Arthur Avenue, is the heart of The Bronx's Little Italy. My mom had heard a lot about it and wanted to go try it out. She had done her research which landed us at Ann & Tony's restaurant. We were probably the only "non-regulars" and non-Italian people in the place! They literally had to put a table together for us towards the front of the restaurant. It was pretty cool!

We started off with a bottle of Chianti (yum!) and bread with olive oil. The olive oil was only the best dipping olive oil any of us had ever had. From what we could tell it was a combination of olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano, garlic and crushed red pepper. It was divine. They had to bring us seconds because none of us could stop eating it!

It was a prix fixed menu so for our appetizer they brought out for the table: eggplant parmesean and fried mozzerella cheese. They were both delicious although I perferred the cheese because I'm not quite an eggplant lover yet. Then they brought out our pasta. We had a choice of two and I chose the penne in vodka sauce. It was delish! I should have bought some to bring home it was that good. Even though I knew I had another dish coming I just could not stop myself from finishing the bowl!

My entree was chicken parm (of course!) and it was huge. I brought 3/4 of it home for Jon for dinner that night so he got to enjoy a taste of Arthur Avenue as well. Lastly, we all had a small bowl of ice cream for dessert. We had wanted gelato but their freezer had been left over and their basement was covered in gelato so that was not meant to be.

The meal lasted about 3-3.5 hours! It was a lot of food but it was over a lot of time and it was so good. I came home and immediately changed for the gym and was down there for 90 minutes. I felt fine the next day!

Overall, I loved eating on Arthur Avenue. I would definitely return (with reservations again of course.) I would know to eat light before going next time:) It's a hidden gem and next time I would love to look in the Italian Deli's and Gourmet Food Shops to see what unique ingredients I might be able to pick up.

Post in Comments:

Have you ever eaten on Arthur Avenue?

What's your favorite Italian restaurant?

3 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Thanks for your review. I'm happy you liked our restaurant. I'm Ralph, my brother Anthony is the chef. Did I wait on you? Yes, the freezer broke and it took us 2 days to clean up the gelato that was all over the place...LOL!!! The next time you visit the gelatos on me. Check out our fan page on Facebook...www.annandtonysonline.com/fanpage.
You can get an updated picture of our front to use on your blog post or I could email you one if you like. If you need anything else for your blog post please let me know. Thanks again for the review. I'm going to re-post it on twitter and on Facebook. See you soon.

readerbean said...

Ralph, I think you were our waiter!!! We had such a blast - we were all talking about it the next day. I'll definitely check you out on twitter & FB. If you want to send any pictures to me to update my blogpost you can email me at beth_pfeilAThotmail.com.

Thanks!!!