Dinner at Il Fornaio

It has been many weeks since we have gone out for dinner.   When we do go out for dinner we often eat Italian since we can order pasta for my daughter.    Its hard to stay on a diet and go out for dinner.   The food served in restaurants is often too rich, the portions are large, and then there's the high sodium!   But both my wife and I have been doing so well on our diets it seemed like we deserved a night out.

We went to Il Fornaio in downtown San Jose.   The restaurant is located inside the historic St. Claire Hotel.    I always like walking through the lobby of the hotel to get to the restaurant.   It feels like I have gone back in time for a few moments.

I looked up the menu online before we left and had identified a couple of dishes I could eat and stay within my calorie budget for the day and also ate a lighter lunch to give myself a little more room.   But when we looked at the menu, I had a hard time making up my mind.   My wife was feeling the same way, so we decided to share and appetizer, pasta dish, and a main course.   We started with Carpaccio followed by Pennoni alla Vodka (giant penne pasta with a vodka-cream sauce), and Petto di Pollo al Peperoncino (chicken breast marinated with sage, rosemary, thyme, crushed red pepper, white wine, Dijon mustard and lemon; served with spicy peperoncino sauce).  

We passed on wine and the whole meal was around 700 calories and amazing.   I don't know if it was amazing because we just haven't gone out to dinner much or if was really amazing in an absolute sense, but we were very happy that we went out to dinner.   And the bill for the three of us came out to only $60 before tip!   I guess there are some financial advantages to watching the calories.