Da’Silvana

For our recent semi-monthly meet up, BFF and I decided to go get sushi at a place local to my and her boyfriend’s apartments (he lives within walking distance of me now).  As you can see above, we did not get sushi, as the place we wanted to go to is closed on Tuesdays!  Boo.  But not to fear – I’d heard good things about Da’Silvana, a few doors down from the sushi place, and had been meaning to check it out anyway.  So into the relatively empty restaurant we trooped, no worries, because it was still pretty early. 

I thought it was cute that on the menu, they caption spaghetti alla puttanesca with “ladies of the evening” – with no other explanation what that might mean… 😉 but also that spaghetti & mushroom sauce was listed twice, with no discernible difference. 

Bread and butter arrived warm to the table, and we quickly inhaled this – I love warm bread, soft butter… and I was really hungry. 

Being a cold day, both of us wanted to get soup to warm us up.  BFF ordered the minestrone, and said it was… pretty bad, tasting like it’d come from a can.  Wow.  Not a good thing. 

I also wanted soup but I wanted to keep it fairly light, so I ordered the tortellini soup.  I’ve also been making some version of tortellini soup at home for a few months now, and wanted to see what would arrive if I ordered it.  I was surprised by the base of the soup; it was creamy white and thin in appearance.  I’ve been making it with a tomato base, so this was especially interesting to me.  I thought it was quite good, though plain and simple – I will have to try making this myself sometime.  The tortellini itself was standard though – parmesan, I don’t think these were housemade.   

BFF and I decided to split a pasta and a main course; for our pasta we chose spaghetti with mushroom sauce.  They automatically split the portion into two for us, so yes, that’s a half portion and way more than enough for me.  We were both surprised when it came, though; I think we both expected more like a marsala, but we also both expressed pleasure and ate it happily.  This is definitely something I will start making at home – add mushrooms to my red sauce.  Duh.  Who’d have thought?  This was very tasty.

We also split the chicken francese – again, this is a half portion, a full portion is two of these big pieces of chicken! – which I found very good.  It was lemony enough, and while chicken breast is never my preference, this one was super moist, with just enough sauce to enhance but not drown it.  Yum.  I think I’ve found my neighborhood Italian joint… must go back and try some of their other offerings, just to confirm that this is my new place for chicken francese and the like.  Mmm. 

The chicken francese also came with a choice of side of either steamed broccoli (healthy!) or potato croquettes.  Deep fried mashed potatoes?  Sure, why not!  Don’t they look like sausages?  Well, they were croquettes, and pleasant enough, though I certainly will order the broccoli or vegetable next time.  For health purposes, you see? 

Yvo says: I am really glad that I finally got over there to try this place.  I will definitely be returning to try more Italian-American dishes, and hopefully I am right – this will be my new go-to for Italian food in the area!  Yum!  And the prices are reasonable, with pretty big portions 🙂
recommended