Walk the Line

Happy Easter! Hope you were able to celebrate with friends and family.

On Friday afternoon, my Mom flew into Providence to visit for a few days. After I picked her up, we headed to Federal Hill, an Italian neighborhood in Providence. I wanted to take her somewhere nice to eat, but there are an innate number of restaurants, which left me cluelessly as to where to start. Enter Open Table.

Open Table is a website that allows you to look at restaurant reviews, make and cancel reservations online, and earn reward points towards dining at restaurants (not sure how this works yet, but I'll figure it out). Mike, a co-worker of mine who does quite a bit of traveling, swears by Open Table. He uses it whenever he's traveling to find the best spots without doing a bunch of legwork. I guess it's similar to Trip Advisor but focuses merely on food.

After looking at the options, I chose Pane e Vino, which was also recommended by a friend. We were a little early, and it looked a little empty... I get nervous if a restaurant isn't busy on a Friday night because that usually means it isn't very good! Turns out other people just got out to eat later. We had a lovely dinner- I had Caesar salad and Mom had halibut with olive oil, garlic, and cherry tomatoes, accompanied by the Italian version of a giant tater tot. Dessert was a warm apple tart with a small (it looked like they scooped it out with a melon baller... I mean, I know our portions in America are too big, but give me a break!) bit of vanilla ice cream.

We spent all day Saturday and part of Sunday in Boston- more to come on that later. (I know, I still owe you details of my trip with my Dad to Newport.) Tonight we made homemade pepperoni pizza Roth-style (friends of mine that first introduced me to pepperoni pizza with banana peppers- yum!) and watched "Walk the Line," the movie with Reees Witherspoon and Joaquin Phonenix about Johnny Cash. I didn't really know his story, so it was pretty interesting but it was too long- 135 minutes without anything blowing up seems like forever.

Hope you have a great week! Cheers!