|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Ate: August 26, 2006 Published: August 27, 2006 $$ It struck us this evening that we have been somewhat remiss in our responsibility to represent North Myrtle Beach in this column. Deciding to remedy this, we set north with no particular destination in mind. So, acting just like a tourist (except that we used our turn signal and didn't drive too slow), the two of us drove along Highway 17 in North Myrtle just naming off restaurants we passed until we found one that matched our mood. Since our mood was for pizza, Benito's Brick Oven was our pick for the evening. The charming faux-Italian villa look on the outside continued on the inside of the restaurant. The place was bustling, most every table was already full with a late-August crowd. The mood of the patrons and the staff was mellow and laid back. Benito's definitely tries to be the kind of place where you can casually drop in after a long day along the beach. Instead of our usual single appetizer, we decided to try a couple of them - both fried. The zucchini sticks and cheese sticks came out of the kitchen hot and ready. Unfortunately, there were followed by our pizza two minutes later, so it had to sit to the side getting cold while we tried our appetizers. More on that later. The zucchini sticks were excellent. The breading was fried to a crisp golden brown and the zucchini inside, while not al dente, still had a little firmness to it. It went very well with the accompanying sauce and went down smoothly. The cheese sticks were also enjoyable. They were thick, tasty and not too hot where the cheese burns your mouth and drips down onto your chin. But our pizza was a different story. Looking at it while munching on our appetizers, we already sensed that something was amiss. My bride and I had decided to be adventurous and try our first ever white pizza. I'm a sucker for feta cheese on a pizza, so we ordered their quattro fromaggion, or four-cheese pizza specifically because one of the listed cheeses was feta. But we couldn't see any feta crumbles on ours. The only thing that stood out to us was the spoonfuls of ricotta cheese that had been glopped onto the pizza and not smoothed out. Ricotta may be a solid workhorse cheese that makes up the backbone of lasagna, but by itself as a pizza topping, it is actually kind of bland. I think that this was the first pizza either of us has ever eaten that we actually had to put salt on. Since this was our first white pizza, we don't know whether the blandness is characteristic of all white pizzas or just the one we ordered. All we do know is that we were wishing we had ordered a couple of their pasta dishes instead. Our night at Benito's Brick Oven was a hit-and-miss affair. We thoroughly enjoyed the casual atmosphere and our appetizers. However, our waiter's casual attitude went a bit far and our evening's service suffered. Maybe if we'd gotten there a bit earlier, before the crowd, things would have been different. We'll have to try them again, just not the white pizza next time. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright ©2010 ReviewMyrtleBeach.com |
| Want Us To Review A Particular Restaurant? Just Click Here And Ask |
 Our RSS Feed |