Nothing But Noodles' "Italian Trio"

Making our first official foray into the world of restaurant food criticism, we found plenty to criticize at a normally impressive fast-but-not-fastfood food place: Nothing But Noodles. Here's their online menu, although, suspiciously, their new dishes don't appear! http://www.nothingbutnoodles.com/menu.php

B-Com Says:

First off, it's freezing inside! I've been in here in the heart of August and found the fireplace lit and roaring away. Today, when it's 2 outside, the fireplace is cold.

OK, now let me concentrate on what I ordered.

When I walked up to the counter, the picture announcing the New Italian Trio caught my eye. It showed three delectable offerings: Chicken Marsala, Chicken Piccata and Chicken Parmigiana. As I asked the girl behind the counter what Chicken Marsala was, I was greeted with a blank look. Assuming she didn't speak Italian as fluently as me, I slowly asked about Chicken Piccata. She was falling deeper into the void, and I was scared I might go with her into the netherworlds. So I threw it in reverse and ordered the Marsala.

In about a five-minute turnaround, the waitress brought out a bowl full of bowtie pasta, a boat-ton of chopped tomatoes, two thin chicken breasts and a light tannish-brown sauce. Just to clarify, there was a tremendous amount of chopped tomatoes. I mean, a hell of a lot of tomatoes. It was like two-thirds of the bowl. Seriously.

Taking one complete bite, I noted the springy pasta, the tender chicken, and a mouth absolutely dripping with chopped tomato. The sauce seemed to not even be there. It added nothing to the dish at all, and that left the rest of the ingredients floating around in one bowl with nothing in common.

It felt like a cheap wine all gussied up to make itself seem expensive. Nondescript, boring, and too many damn tomatoes!

TURD!

J-Lam says:

I gotta say, I didn't fair much better. While B-Com nearly drowned in the deep end with our space cadet counter girl, I was busy trying to manage filling two cups of iced tea from the fountain and juggle the napkins, silverware and straws from the central caddy because this restaurant is still grasping tight to the fast-food feel despite it's double-digit entree prices.

Don't get me wrong, all this aside, I normall love Nothing but Noodles. But their Italian Trio is an odd addition to their menu due to one important factor: the food is normally good, and these dishes aren't.

I chose the Chicken Parmigiana. How can you screw up Chicken Parm?

Here's how:

Put two frozen, breaded, thin strips of tasteless chicken on top of a pile of spaghetti coated in watery sauce and (you guessed it,) chopped tomatoes. Then, throw a handful of cheese on top and heat it up.

The sauce tasted alright, and the noodles were fine. (That's their real specialty, isn't it?) But the chicken was truly tough to swallow and I ended up leaving more than half of it. And that's not my style, if you know what I mean.

Overall, I was pretty disappointed. And by the time we left, I was totally sick of B-Com complaining about the damn tomatoes!