Return to Review Index"Okay, millions of years ago or not, there were dinosaurs here!" sputtered Max, salad and dressing hanging from his lips like foam on a mad dog, a forked piece of calamari held before him as if it accentuated his point. "And we cover it up with strip mall architecture like this and serve bland squid bits which we declare 'Best In Town.'"
"I don't think it's half bad," I replied in the calm, soothing manner I learned from several Social Services jobs. "I'd describe it as subtle and peppery, quite good with a spritz of lemon," I continued as I handed him a lemon wedge in the hopes it'd calm him down and quiet his sudden "Save-The Whales" type preoccupation with dinosaurs on south 13th street.
I went on, "And they decorate well in here, much better than you'd think by looking at the outside of the building." Which is true, from the outside, Raphael's looks like a bank. But the inside has a warm, surprisingly antique feel to it. "Here, have some marinara. It's tasty. Want more cheese for your salad?"
Max knew I was patronizing him. But he simply rolled his eyes and accepted it. "No, this salad has plenty of cheese, it has lots of cheese, I suppose you'd call it a 'manly' salad as it's 'more-cheese-mo'"
I chose to ignore this and gnawed on a bread stick. A good bread stick at that. Fried rather than baked, we both dug into them as they weren't quite your typical restaurant-bread; they seemed more like something from the Funnel Cake family, though not enough to make you feel like puking afterward. I dunked a bit into my delicious cream of clam and broccoli soup and asked, "So how's the wine list look?"
"Eh, good enough. I'd like to try this red wine here." Then, of course, he ordered a Coke with no ice and talked more about dinosaurs.
"But come on," I said, "you can't blame these folks here! It says in the menu that 3 brothers took this place over from the Pelleritos just last year. They're not even Italian. They're just trying. It's not their fault."
Max simply snorted, then sneered, "yah, tell that to the diplodocus. I'm sure he'd be all ears except, oh, he's dead, all of them dead!"
Fortunately, our waiter Al came by with my Sicilian Chicken and Max's Scallop Asiago. Max turned to him as he set our plates down, "So how do you feel about this restaurant taking up space once valuable to the dinosaurs, on land rendered and spit out by machinery and made unuseable by a dying species?" The waiter kept his eyes on Max and then did the closest a waiter can come to a sprint without being considered rude as he left.
Max sighed, chalked that up as a "No comment" and dug in. He didn't seem too overawed by his scallops, enjoying the cream sauce as a good compliment to the scallops and pasta, but mumbling that it tasted fishy and a tad chewy. I, however, saw the scallops as excellent since they occupied his word-hole for a little while. My compliments to the chef there.
And my chicken also came out excellently, with a fantastic favor of garlic and sauces accentuated nicely by the artichoke hearts. The veggies and pasta on the side, though, made me start to long for those carefree days of dinosaur conversation which had far more flavor to them. "I love a plate with garnish," I said, watching Max push the colorful bits of parsley, red pepper, and purple onion around the rim of his plate.
"You know, Nebraska is a great place to find traces of the dinosaurs," Max replied. "There's Ashfall Fossil Beds north of here and Agate Fossil Beds National Monument in the Panhandle, and no doubt tons of other sites. You, my friend, have a petty, little, walnut-sized mind. Open it up. These people raped the land, and for what?"
"Well, the chicken was good...."
"For a building that tries for character, but then you go into the bland bathroom and find white walls with all the personality of an Amoco's."
"And I DID like my soup, and those bread sticks...."
"Sure, their salad is crisp and fresh, but what's that to an ankylosaurus? A DEAD ankylosaurus?"
"Hey, look, they have turtle cheesecake for dessert."
Max's eyes widened. "Turtle cheesecake? Bring out the dessert. Did you know the first turtles appeared over 200 million years ago?"
And so we left Raphael's, filled fairly tautly though not overwhelmed. On our scale of "The orginial Godzilla" to "last year's Godzilla with Matthew Broderick," we give Raphael's a "The Lost World"