Caro Amico

There are many reasons to love our wives. From the various things to do to take care of us, to the various ways they make life easier, to the various surprises they throw our way. Tonight was such a night, where a pleasant surprise that could've been annoying ended up making me pretty happy.

In my experience, guys are often more free and easy food-wise than women. Most guys I know will go to any restaurant their significant other wants to go to, and most women I know eat by mood. Now, to be fair, there are certainly times I'm not in the mood for a type of food (usually it's Chinese that I'm not looking for), but in general even if I don't want to eat some type of food, I'll do it if my wife wants to bad enough, and I'll generally walk away happy.

In my home (I don't know how it is in yours), there's a nightly conversation that starts around 6pm. Usually my wife initiates it by saying "what should we have for dinner tonight?" Then the game is on. Usually I'll go through our fridge, freezer, and shelves first. So tonight, my first offer was to grill up some chicken and make up some barley; then to make up the homemade tamales we have in our freezer. After that, I offered to make grilled cheese and soup. And then the offerings dried up, because we need to go shopping.

So I started throwing out various choices. I could get rolled chicken tacos (one of my wife's favorite choices) from Trader Joe's. I could get take-out from a local restaurant. I even offered Chinese. No dice. "None of that sounds good to me, I'm not in the mood for that."

There's something she's always in the mood for, though, so I finally offered it. Pizza from Caro Amico. We've been to Caro Amico for a wide range of food. Their appetizer tray is superb. Their Caesar Salads are wonderful. Their pasta is good, their calzones quite tasty. And, if you eat there, the view out to the East is quite lovely.

But 9 times out of 10, if I'm darkening their doorstep, it's to pick up a pizza to take home. In fact, generally speaking any pizza served in our home is from there. And, generally speaking, we're eating the Stevie's Wonder with some black olives added.

The Stevie's Wonder is a thing of beauty. Take a thin-crust pizza, put sauce on it, then add cheese, pepperoni, garlic (and more garlic), and pepperoncinis. That, in and of itself, is lovely enough. The black olives are my wife's personal touch, and they push it over the edge from delightful to delectable.

It's pretty simple to place an order. Call the restaurant, order what you want, and show up about 20 minutes later. Go into the bar and let the bartender know you're there. He'll bring your food out and take care of your payment. And, half the time, he'll hand you a coupon towards your next pizza order.

Usually I try to show up about 12 minutes after my call-in, so that I have time to read the ever-present newspaper on the bar and drink a Stella Artois. The service is always prompt, and often there's someone in the bar who'll try to chat you up (tonight the guy next to me was reading a book, but last time I was there some out-of-towner was talking to me about his college football team, who was playing on the TV above).

There are a lot of great pizza places in town, and I don't mean to suggest the Caro Amico is the king. But for a very good quality pizza, at home or take out, and some nice environment while you wait (either way), you could do a hell of a lot worse.