A few friends and I are
starting to have a monthly dinner club going on. We meet at one of the many
restaurants on Castro St in Mountain View and have pledged to try a different
one each month. We’ve done Asian Box (or at least Queen of Cheap Eats and I
have) and Blue Line Pizza so far. For December, we stayed on the same block and
went to Doppio Zero, a little Italian restaurant. Doppio won out from the
options we discussed since they took reservations and that made it easier for
us to plan rather than hoping a restaurant on a popular street during the
holiday season would have a table for 4 ready without a long wait.
I have a tendency to want to
mainline carbs, particularly bread and pasta, so Doppio Zero is my kind of
restaurant. There was the requisite bread basket with warm slices of baguette
and a pleasing variety of options on the menu from pastas to pizzas and other
traditional Italian fare. I went with the lasagna, one person got the gnocchi,
another the ravioli and our fourth member got the spaghetti with clams. The
mark of a good restaurant? We all liked our entrees. We even liked each other’s
orders from the sampling we did from everyone else’s plate (we’re girls, we’re
not shy about stuff like that). My own lasagna was delicious although the
portion size meant I had enough for 3 more meals that weekend.
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| Gnocchi |
Not only that but our
wandering eyes noted all the delicious-looking orders being delivered to nearby
tables and we started planning ahead to what we would want to order next time
we came: the fried calamari appetizer for Queen of Cheap Eats, the pizza for
another, the calzone for me. And the gnocchi for a different person who liked
the sample she tried from the other person’s plate.
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| Ravioli |
The prices were reasonable as
well, which is always a plus(!). Our wait person was nice, service was good and
the manager (I assume he was the manager) stopped by our table to make sure we
were happy. We were.
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| Lasagna |
My only disappointment was the
dessert. Doppio Zero’s dessert offerings leaned a bit too much to custard-y
desserts (cheesecakes, tiramisu, etc) but I thought the chocolate cake was
promising so we ordered 2 slices to split among the 4 of us. We toyed with the
idea of each of us getting our own slice of chocolate cake but I think we were
trying to be grownup and go with the sharing concept. Which turned out to be a
good call as the chocolate cake was just okay. It was chocolate, it was decent
but I wasn’t wowed. I suspect they contract out their desserts or don’t make it
inhouse because it wasn’t the same standard as our entrees were. Still, the main
courses were so good that none of us had any trouble foregoing our original
plan of trying out a new restaurant every month and instead decided that for
our next outing, we were coming back to Doppio to try out more entrees. Can't offer a better recommendation than that.
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