Should the local Carabinieri stop you for a pasta check while strolling on West Central in Provo, you can stick out your chin, Mussolini-style, and tell them you are headed to the Oregano Italian Kitchen. They will immediately cease hassling you, for there is good stuff to eat at Oregano, and the service is molto veloce.
Of course, like most modern Italian joints today, the inside is just this side of pitch dark. This seems to be the trend for stylish restaurants; they don't want you to be able to see what you are eating. Or maybe they are just being stingy on the lighting bill. Luckily, my owl-like vision allowed me to stroll suavely through the welter of tables and chairs with hardly a halt to violently bang my knee on some lurking piece of furniture. I not only see well in the dark, but some folk actually claim that I glow in the dark as well. All that strontium 90 in my pap as a child, no doubt.
My waiter seated me quickly and efficiently, then began jabbering at me in something resembling English but skewed with such a deep and impenetrable accent that I had to ask for a rerun several times before catching the drift of his monologue. Hopefully, he has only been in the United States for a few weeks -- because if he's been interacting with us down home folks for several years and can't shake that gosh dern accent, then by cracky he's in for a sockdolager of a time!
I just had water to drink with my meal. Since this is Utah, getting a license to serve beer and wine is like getting permission to wear a turban and ululate wildly in Arabic -- ain't gonna happen, chum. That's one reason why diners in Utah are a little bit more churlish and less inclined to tip than in other areas of the country -- there's nothing like a couple shots of hooch at lunch to brighten the rest of the day and loosen the purse strings.
I started things off with a calamari fritta -- squid rings. Piping hot, they were great -- but as they started to cool off they lost their will to fight back or exhibit any great flavor. So I had to gobble them fast and burn the roof of my mouth or let them cool and be denied their zest. It's things like this that make restaurant critics prematurely gray around the tonsils.
Then came the spaghetti carbonara. With a sliver of toast, and I mean a sliver; I could have used it for a toothpick. Only franchises like Olive Garden shower you with bread nowadays; independent joints are more concerned about gluten, I guess. This place is also very chaste when it comes to garlic. The reek of it doesn't hang in the air like a miasma, as it used to in all the Italian places I ever haunted as a young man. But there was plenty of grated Parmesan on both my items. They must grow it in the basement. All in all, this pasta dish was just as rich as you'd want it to be. But I had to ask for red pepper flakes to wake it up a bit. And I am getting smarter as a food critic, folks; instead of gobbling the whole thing down and then lurching home to sit in my recliner for the next three hours feeling like a beached whale, I only ate about a third of it and brought the rest home with me. So if you happen to be in the neighborhood in the next 24 hours you can stop by and ask for the leftovers -- I doubt I'm going to get to them before they spoil. Another cross we cuisine queens have to bear.
One final note before I shut up. Since I liked the food and would gladly bring friends and family I decided to thaw my miserly ways just a bit and leave a big tip. I put it on my debit card and as I walked out of the place, giving it a four-burp rating, I began to wonder if there is any difference between tiping with my debit card and leaving cash on the table as a tip. So I called my daughter Sarah, who waitressed for a while, and asked her. She told me that wait staff always prefer a cash tip left on the table, because they can just pocket that and no questions asked; whereas if it's just added to the debit card it has to be taxed and divided between staff members, etc.
So I'll be getting some cash out of the ATM before reviewing another one of Provo's hash houses. It'll impress my daughter Sarah and maybe I'll see more of her and the grand kids . . .
My entire meal, the fritti and the spaghetti carbonara, came to $17.24.
