A few days ago I made Buitoni Italian Sausage Ravioli with pasta sauce for lunch. The refrigerated ravioli are huge, the type that you need to cut in two to fit into your mouth. The filling has visible chunks of Italian sausage mixed with cheeses and breadcrumbs. It definitely tastes like Italian sausage, and you can easily just eat these ravioli with only added butter or olive oil – they are pretty dry, so they need a source of moisture. They did OK with the tomato-based pasta sauce I used, but this mostly covered the flavor of the sausage so it was unnecessary.
The regular package is 10 oz, and will feed two if you add a salad or you are not very hungry. It was $7 at Safeway, but I got it in a BOGO deal.
Prego, along with Ragú, are two of the oldest supermarket pasta sauces. They are also the cheapest – created at a time when economy and convenience were the most important factors for shoppers. As inflation brings hunger to America, we are right back where we started.
Prego sauces are made with tomato paste, rather than with whole or diced tomatoes as the more expensive brands. If you watch food tasters out there, Prego ranks at the bottom. It may be familiarity, but I actually like these cheaper pasta brands, as I find them more flavorful and complex – they need to make up with spices what they can’t accomplish with fresh ingredients.
Prego Creamy Tomato Garlic is part of a new line of Prego sauces which combine tomato sauce with cream. I think they are founded on the success of vodka sauce which became a thing a decade or two ago. I thought it was very good. On the ravioli, it was a tad too acidic and but it was very tasty, but I also used it to make my regular meat sauce and it was absolutely delicious in it. My husband actually remarked at how good it was, and we ended up eating up the whole sauce from the pot before we even boiled the pasta.
The sauce was $2 at Safeway (from $4.50 regular). Prego is made by Campbell’s,
This relaxing Campbell restaurant offers good food and friendly service.
I was excited when my friend Lola chose Naschmarkt to celebrate her 50-something birthday. My experience with Austrian cuisine has been extremely limited. I have never been to Austria or eaten at an Austrian restaurant before, and while I cooked Austrian food as part of my international food project, this was twenty two years ago, and it didn’t turn out that well.
Despite living in the Bay Area for close to four decades, I also don’t think I’d ever been to Campbell. We didn’t end up seeing much of it, but I enjoyed strolling up and down Campbell Ave., seeing the bougie restaurants and stores, and perusing the stalls at the farmer’s market. We even bought a bottle of cider, though I dropped and broke it before we could try it.
It was a beautiful Sunday in early September, and sitting in Naschmarkt’s sidewalk patio was a lovely experience. It’s about a block away from all the buzzle of the street, so it’s quieter, but still allows for some people watching. It added to the European aspect of the meal.
While we waited for Lola to arrive – we were early – I enjoyed a sparkling water (we weren’t charged for the bottle), while Mike had a blood orange cosmopolitan ($17) which he liked very much.
We started by sharing the homemade pretzel with double-smoked bacon, beer-cheese sauce and chives ($16). I’m not a huge fan of pretzels, and while I appreciated that this one was soft, I felt that the flavor was too strong to compete against the cheese – which was good, but very subtle. The cheese sauce was actually better with white bread, or with the interior of the pretzel (though there isn’t too much of that). I don’t think I would order it again myself. Mike liked that the bagel was warm, and he liked it with the mustard rather than the cheese sauce.
We also shared the sausage trio ($36), which came with a smoked pork bratwurst, a spicy paprika wurst, and a “sausage of the day”and was served with red cabbage, sauerkraut, caramelized onions, and Dijon mustard.
I’m not the hugest fan of sausages, and I wasn’t personally impressed by any of these. Mike and Lola liked them, however and in particular the spicy paprika one. Mike thought they were all good, even if he can’t recall what the “sausage of the day” was.
I had been planning to get the chicken paprikash ($25) for lunch, as I’ve made severalversions of this dish and have enjoyed them, but they didn’t have it available for lunch that day. So I settled for the spätzle ($30), which comes with smoked chicken, corn, brussels sprouts leaves, tarragon and mushrooms. I had mine without corn and extra mushrooms. This is listed under appetizers ($20) but you can have a lunch-size portion as well. As it happened, the lunch size portion was too much after having the other appetizer, so I took half of it home.
Overall I liked it, though I didn’t love it. I think the problem was that it was too mildly tasting except for the smoked chicken, and then the smoked chicken was a bit overwhelming in flavor. I think I might have enjoyed this more if it had bacon instead of chicken. I did like the chewy consistency of the spätzle. I don’t think I’d order it again.
Mike had the classic wiener schnitzel ($32) which comes with Austrian potato salad. The wiener schnitzel was a very good, nicely seasoned and very tender milanesa. I think even my milanesa-loving daughter would have approved. Mike enjoyed it, and I loved the couple of bites he gave me. It made me realize that I should make milanesas soon.
Lola had the Hungarian beef goulash ($28), consisting of beef shoulder braised in paprika and served with herbed spätzle, Hungarian pepper, and sour cream. We both felt the dish was quite good. I made goulash before, as part of my exploration of Hungarian cuisine, and this one was comparable. Of course, they nailed the spätzle too.
We couldn’t go to an Austrian restaurant and not have dessert, so Mike and I shared the apfel strudel ($16), described as “apple & hazelnut strudel with whipped cream, toasted almonds & vanilla bean ice cream” – though there was no whipped cream that I could see. I’ve had apple strudel before, but I will confidently say that this was the best version I’ve tasted. It was served warm, which helped a lot, but the crispy yet chewy dough and perfectly sweetened apples, with the occasional crunch of the toasted almonds, was just awesome. I definitely recommend you have it here.
Lola had that day’s special, which was some sort of cheesecake with sour cherries ($15). She liked it quite a bit, even more than my apple strudel – I disagreed, but I’m not fond of cherries.
To celebrate her birthday, they also brought her a complimentary trio of sorbets ($9 otherwise). The passion fruit, blood orange and mango sorbet were all very good, though I found their somewhat chewy consistency disconcerting (I’m guessing they use gelatin). The flavors were very intense and not overly sweet.
Service by a European-sounding gentleman whose name we didn’t catch was outstanding, friendly and efficient, and he was particularly good at seemingly upselling us (that pretzel was not our idea).
In all, we had a great, relaxing time, and I would totally recommend it. Naschmarkt has another location in Palo Alto.
Naschmarkt 384 E Campbell Ave Campbell, CA (408) 378-0335 Su- Thu 11:30 – 2pm, 5 – 9 pm F - Sa 11:30 – 2pm, 5 – 9:30 pm
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