Hamden Restaurant Week 5—Café Amici (With Mayor Scott Jackson)

Another worthy restaurant addition to the Land of the Sleeping Giant

is Café Amici.

Located on Whitney Avenue up the street from St. Rita’s Church in the Spring Glen section of Hamden, Café Amici opened its doors in February of 2007 in the space that once housed Café Bella.

Café Amici’s sidewalk was undergoing improvements during Hamden Restaurant Week, as seen here on Wednesday evening.

The paving stones appear to be an attractive enhancement to an already handsome Tudor-style building.

The sidewalk situation didn’t seem to slow down this gal from the Starline Nail Salon next door,

or this Café Amici customer in the least.

And even a day later, real progress had been made.

I arrived on Wednesday evening before the real rush, and the waiting area was empty

and the bar almost deserted.

The dining areas, however, were basically full.

Note that roughly an hour later, many of the tables had changed.

And during that hour, the waiting area had also filled. My good friend John Simpson and his daughter Rose were among the detainees.

Restaurant Weeks take a little patience, but the great deals are worth a bit of a wait.

My dining companion was none other than Mayor Scott Jackson,

the individual who first broached the idea of holding a Hamden Restaurant Week. Throughout the summer, I had been working with the Mayor, with Julie Smith from the Town of Hamden, and with Nancy Dudchik from the Hamden Chamber of Commerce to put the event together. All four of us have been visiting the thirteen participating establishments as much as possible, both to support them in their endeavors and to observe and learn.

Although the Mayor and I are separated by a good many years, we share a lot in common. We are both Hamden High graduates who were on the debate team and were good track athletes. We both attended Cornell University, both enrolled in its College of Arts & Sciences, both started out in Mary Donlon Hall, and both were Government majors. We knew many of the same people.

Seeing to it that we had a great dining experience was Café Amici chef-owner Michael Migliaro

and other staff members like Steve

and Amy.

But the individual who took care of our every need was Alyssa.

She started us off with glasses of Tempranillo, good bread

and fruity olive oil

while we debated what to order.

Café Amici’s participation in Hamden Restaurant Week was a no-brainer, because the restaurant was already offering a four-course prix-fixe menu (normally $25) on a regular basis. In fact, its menu proclaims that Café Amici is “where restaurant week is every week.”

The appetizer choices included: Mozzarella en carrozza, eggplant rollatini, fried calamari, fried Mozzarella, escarole Siciliano and panecotto. The Mayor ordered the Mozzarella en carrozza, a traditional dish in which a slice of fresh Mozzarella is sandwiched between two slices of bread, dipped in egg, and then fried.

I ordered another traditional dish, the panecotto (or cooked bread), a personal favorite which is hard to find in Connecticut outside Greater New Haven.

The soups and salads included pasta e fagioli, escarole and bean, a house salad, a mixed green salad, and a Caesar salad. The Mayor craved a nice Caesar salad (never order that on March 15th, the Ides of March),

while I relished a nice pasta e fagioli.

The entrées included five pastas (penne vodka, rigatoni Bolognese, eggplant Parmesan, penne rabe and sausage, and homemade ravioli), three chicken dishes (chicken Parmesan, chicken saltimbocca and chicken Florentine), three shrimp dishes (shrimp marinara, shrimp Florentine and shrimp oreganato), three fish dishes (scrod fra diavolo, scrod oreganato and baked sole), and three veal dishes (veal Parmesan, veal saltimbocca and veal Florentine). The Mayor ordered the penne rabe and sausage (which I noticed used fine fennel-flavored bulk sausage),