This restaurant is pretty new to end up on my list. It opened in 2001, making it a mere child compared to most everywhere else I’ve been on this food project. Well, a teenager, I guess, quite literally. It’s right on Main Street and it’s deeply invested in atmosphere; red-checked tablecloths, Sinatra and Bennett playing softly, white-shirted, black-tied wait staff, dim lighting. Yeah, this place wants to be the coolest Italian place in a hundred miles and given that it’s located in Salina, KS, it probably is.
Anyway, chicken parm is, barring some sort of absolute disaster of a chicken, just never going to be bad exactly. I mean, it’s chicken with cheese and a nice Italian sauce and this is no exception. The chicken I had was . . . middling. It wasn’t particularly juicy or flavorful, but it wasn’t particularly dry or tough either. I liked the sauce well enough, though, again, I found it to kind of just be your typical sauce. I want to make clear that it isn’t that I DISliked this, it’s just that it doesn’t really have anything to recommend it. I’ve had far better. Maybe this place is just atmosphere. Recommended against. 2 stars
tl;dr – family-owned and atmospheric, this Italian restaurant provides a classic of Italian cuisine that’s decidedly average. 2 stars.