Gialina

We had a really good meal tonight at Gialina. We started with their red oak salad with apricots and cherries. I thought the greens were oversalted on their own, but with the fruit it worked perfectly. They did fall prey to the one thing that always irks me about restaurants that offer fresh pepper: they always ask if you want it before you get to taste the salad (or pasta or whatever). Nonetheless, the salad was quite good. And big (they offer two sizes, we got the large and it really was).

We got the "Atomica" pizza with some onions, chilis and mushrooms. It was really very good. The crust was very thin and crispy, and the edges were quite crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle. The Food Gal was angling for the crusts by the end of the pizza.

We shared a quartino of wine (500ml) which was overpriced, but tasty on the whole and a really great size to offer. Given that combination, we could overlook the price.

The real standout was the dessert pizza. Chocolate-hazelnut spread with mascarpone cheese and amaretti crumbled over the top. It was delicious and pretty large. We also got some Bi-Rite ice cream, which was of course outstanding.

The salad, a bottle of sparkling water, pizza, quartino of wine, two desserts, 2 coffees and a glass of dessert wine came to $95. A good $26 or so of that was the quartino of wine and we'd only do one dessert in the future (we were told the dessert pizza was "half the size" of the regular pizza....it was stretched to half the size, but the same amount of crust...so larger than we thought). I think a reasonable dinner for two, if you weren't trying everything, which we were, would come to about $50 plus tip.

We enjoyed it and will definitely return.