Birthday Dinner at Garduno's Ristorante

Garduno's Ristorante

398 East 17th Street

Costa Mesa, CA 92627

As I get older, birthdays seem to mean a little less to me. You would think it would be just the opposite because with each birthday it brings you closer to the end. I know, that's too dark of a thing to write on a restaurant review site, but it's true. As the early part of June rolls around, and Katie inevitably asks what I want to do for my birthday, I usually want to forgo hanging out with family and friends that want to make a big deal about my latest trip around the sun. I just want to have a low key day, try a restaurant that I have yet to try, with just my beautiful wife by my side.

That's what we ended up doing on this beautiful Sunday early evening in OC. We napped a little in the afternoon, drove to the beach and walked the boardwalk between the Newport and Balboa piers, and then we had planned on eating at one of the restaurants back in Newport. Unfortunately, where we wanted to eat was packed with people watching the NBA Finals, and we could not get a seat for at least a half of NBA basketball, which meant easily another two hours. So we decided to get out of the packed Newport area and headed slightly inland to Costa Mesa.

That's when it hit me that I had a dentist appointment coming up, and my fantastic dentist would ask me for the sixth straight appointment if I had tried one of his favorite Italian restaurants in Costa Mesa yet. Not wanting to disappoint the guy with the sharp implements mere inches away from my open mouth, I decided it would be best to have my birthday dinner at Garduno's Ristorante.

We were just coming from walking at the beach and were unsure if we were dressed appropriately enough to eat here, so we cautiously walked through the door and were put at ease with the red and white checkered tablecloths, wallpapered walls, and the overall general hominess of the place. It also helped assure us since there was only one other table occupied during our entire visit at Garduno's.

Garduno's has been around since 1988 and is situated in the same food rich shopping center as Sidecar Doughnuts, Pie-Not, Mi Casa Mexican Restaurant, and Shirley's Bagels. The menu at Garduno's is pretty much what you would expect from an Italian restaurant in these parts. They have a handful of appetizers to choose from, veal, chicken, baked dishes, and different types of pasta to select from. They make all of their pasta every day and have 14 varieties of sauce to pick from. Pretty impressive from such a small place. I was intrigued and excited to see what my dentist has been talking about the last three years.

Bread came out rather quickly after we had ordered. This was a pretty good representation of Italian sliced bread. It was a bit crusty on the outside and soft on the inside, and it came out warmed with butter packets that were easy to spread since they were heated up a bit by the warm bread.

I don't think I have seen Mozzarella Fritta ($7.95) served like this before. This fried mozzarella was sliced like a thick piece of french toast, breaded, and bathed in a creamy tomato sauce. I guess this is the more grown-up version of mozzarella sticks that lurk on the menus of almost every restaurant around. This was a very good starter. The cheese had a nice stringy quality to it and was not as heavy as I would have expected. The breading had a slight crunch to it, while the sauce was a good version of a blush sauce.

I'm always happy when a salad is included with a meal, and that was the case here at Garduno's, even with the pasta dishes. This House Salad included a nice mix of greens, red cabbage, tomatoes, shredded carrots, olives, cucumber wedges, peppercinis, mozzarella cheese, and a very tangy Italian dressing. The produce was fresh and I definitely appreciated the variety of the veggies in this, but the Italian dressing was too tangy for both Katie and I. A lot of people love this dressing in the online reviews I have read so it might have just been this batch that had too much tang.

When we first started dating I made a carbonara for Katie, and she claims that it helped cement her love for me, which I'm not so sure that's the case, but that's what she claims anyway. She tried the Carbonara ($19.90 which includes a $2.95 upcharge for picking tortellini as her pasta) on this evening at Garduno's. This was a very creamy version of a carbonara sauce. It did include peas, pancetta bacon, and mushrooms, and ended up being quite good. I'm not a big fan of tortellini, but Katie liked it with this dish, even though it did not bring to mind other traditional carbonara dishes she has had in the past. This came out scalding hot, and as it cooled the sauce kind of grew on me. I even scraped her bowl clean and mixed it with half of my meal that I took home for work the next day.

For my birthday dinner, I went with the Meat Lasagna ($15.95). This was a very saucy, yet meaty version of a lasagna. They use a mix of ground brisket and chuck, then add parmesan, mozzarella, and ricotta cheeses to this almost noodle-less lasagna. There might have been a couple of pasta sheets in here, but they were kind of overwhelmed by the very thick tomato sauce and meat. Not that I didn't mind the extra abundance of meat in this, it just would have been nice to have it be a little more balanced. I've gotten into the habit of ordering Meatballs ($3.90 for 2) at every Italian restaurant I've eaten at lately. These were not a bad version whatsoever. They had a nice texture to them, not too firm, but still loose enough to break easily using a fork. They had a good flavor and went well when I added one of them to my already meaty lasagna.

What would a birthday dinner be without dessert? I'm not usually too excited by Italian desserts. Not really a fan of tiramisu or cannolis, but these Gelato Truffles ($5.95) hit the spot. These were described perfectly on the menu as large bonbons. We had the Mint and the Salted Caramel variety. These worked out perfectly for Katie and I as I liked the mint one, while she was content with the salted caramel bonbon. These were about the same size as a racquetball, with some pretty decent gelato included inside the chocolate shelled scoop that resembled the Magic Shell we used as kids.

Garduno's ended up being a very adequate spot for my birthday dinner. I wouldn't say that it blew us away, but it's a good neighborhood Italian restaurant and one that we would visit fairly frequently if we lived nearby. In an area where there is some pretty stiff competition for Italian food, (Mama D's, Filomena's, North Italia, and others), Garduno's kind of gets lost in the shuffle, but they are worthy of a visit. Service during our stay was a bit awkward, but in the end, our server kept things moving along at a decent clip. Glad I can finally report back to my dentist that I made it here after nearly three years of him asking me. Now maybe he'll take it easy on me with all of those root canals.

Out of five crazy chickens, (because the largest employer in the city of Costa Mesa is El Pollo Loco), five being best to zero being worst, Garduno's Ristorante gets 3 crazy chickens.

For more information about Garduno's Ristorante, head to their website here: https://www.gardunosristorante.com/