Saturday night Dani and I went to Lidia's Italian restaurant in the Strip District. We made a reservation; over the phone it sounded like this was necessary, though we saw several empty tables when we were there.

They have a special consisting of three pastas of the day. Our server told us that two of the pastas were made fresh on-site and the third was imported (dried) from Italy; I don't know if that's usual or just what was true yesterday. One of the three had bacon in it yesterday; I assumed they made the pastas in batches and I'd be out of luck, but I asked and was pleasantly surprised to find that they were happy to make a vegetarian version of that dish for me. They serve the pasta by coming around with small pans, not by just bringing you a plate from the kitchen, so I guess they just made one vegetarian pan. The winner for me among the three pastas was the goat-cheese ravioli in a butter sauce.

The pastas are all-you-can-eat, which surprised me in a restaurant that positions itself a couple notches above family dining. That meant that, technically, I could have just gotten the other two if I'd wanted and skipped the objectionable one. (I hadn't noticed it was AYCE when I ordered.) The pasta special is $16 by itself or $28 with salad and dessert; next time I'll order an a-la-carte salad and skip the dessert. The salad that came bundled with it was a pretty uninspiring caeser salad; Dani's arugula with beets and citrus looked much more interesting. (Actually, I would have gotten the greens with pears, gorgonzola, and walnuts, most likely.)

Dani ordered another daily special consisting of the aforementioned salad, a breaded pork chop that he found very flavorful (and was larger than I'm used to seeing, not that I'm an expert on pork), and dessert. Nice touch I've never seen before: his dish came with lemon to squeeze over it, and the lemon half came wrapped in bright yellow cloth (cheesecloth, maybe?) and tied with a ribbon. Why is that neat? Because you can squeeze lemon juice over your food without getting seeds in it or making your hand smell like lemon. Cute.

Dani got a spice cake for dessert that was sizable but not ridiculous. I got a trio of sorbets and ice creams, which were beautifully presented and tasty but quite small in portion size. I think each was about two tablespoons, and each was graced with a bite-sized complementary member of the cookie family (one was biscotti). Pretty, tasty, and nicely embellished -- but not worth the price.

We found the service to be earnest but a little disorganized. They were pretty good about keeping my Diet Coke filled but it took a very long time for Dani to get a refill on his hot tea (including another tea bag). When I asked for more of the ravioli our server typed a few things in a nearby console immediately, and a few minutes later someone came to serve ravioli to the next table, but that person then left without visiting us. It took another 5 minutes or so, and our server stopping by to ask if I'd gotten it, before it appeared. (They seemed to be using a computer network to track orders, at least for things requiring refills; Dani and I were both curious about it but we decided not to ask for a closer look on the way out.) Our meal took an hour and a half end to end, and I'd guess that about 10 minutes of that was wasted time on their part.

The decor seemed fine to me; such things do not matter much to me, so take that for what it's worth. The lighting was good, which is often a failure mode in restaurants trying to play at this level. The seats were unusually low (or the tables unusually high), which felt a little awkward to me at 5'3". They are another of these places that uses what appear to be full bottles of wine as decoration (in this case on shelves at different heights, where they could not realistically be accessed to serve). That always makes me wonder -- are they not filled with wine, is this where they store next week's wine and they serve from a stash in the kitchen, or what? The acoustics were very good; we were not bombarded by noise from other tables, nor was it so quiet that we felt our conversation intruded on other tables. I didn't notice if there was music; since there probably was, that means they did a good job of keeping it unobtrusive.

We overheard an entertaining conversation at the next table as we were getting ready to leave: the waiter described one of the specials as "excellent" or some such, and one of the people at the table asked what dishes weren't excellent. (Dani and I have always wanted to ask that in this situation...) The waiter, not missing a beat, said "I think the manicotti is only very good". Good to know. :-)

I would go back again and, as noted before, would order a la carte. In addition to the pasta special I spotted a salmon dish that appears to be a mainstay of their menu. Most of the rest of the menu was meat or shellfish, so there's not a big variety for pescetarians or vegetarians, but there's enough for me -- I figure if there's more than one thing on the menu I can eat I'm doing ok.

Johan used to use "stoup" to refer to something between a soup and a stew. I made a chicken stoup for Shabbat and it was pretty tasty.

Put four chicken thighs in a slow cooker, along with about four sliced carrots, two sliced parsnips, two chopped yellow onions, a generous helping of a spice mixture recommended for chicken (this one had sage, rosemary, thyme, marjoram, paprika, and black pepper), several shakes of minced garlic, and a pint of vegetable broth. Cook on high for four hours. Pull the chicken pieces out, pull off bone, render into bite-sized chunks, add everything but bones back to pot. Add half a bag or so of frozen spinach, stir everything together, and cook for another four hours or so on medium. Serves about four people if that's the meal, maybe more if you serve over rice or with sides.