Ventura Italian

Giving up on Margarita Villa, we wandered over to a promising door to Milano's Italian Restaurant. It also appeared we could enjoy a harbor view from a covered deck while being sheltered from a cold wind.

The view was very pleasant.

I started with an 'add' for $2 garden salad. If the grape tomatoes weren't wrinkled, it would have been better.

Erika & Collette shared some spaghetti with marinara sauce which was unremarkable. Colin was adventurous and tried the linguine pomodoro - garlic, sun-dried tomato, fresh tomato, basil and snow peas sauteed with olive oil. Colin being just 11, was appalled to find that it wasn't 'sauced', so the waiter kindly brought him a side of marinara sauce.

The waiter was a most pleasant and helpful young man, and Erika and I challenged him with all of our questions. Especially me trying to alter the menu items in some way to actually make something I'd like. I am not a heavy cream sauce fan, nor do I like marinara sauce on seafood. So what we figured out was trying the maple/Asian glazed salmon fillet over bow tie pasta minus the garlic cream sauce, and just having the bow tie pasta tossed with a little olive oil. The serving of salmon was positively large, and so I could happily share with the table - as everyone wanted to taste it, it looked and smelled so appetizing. The salmon and it's glaze were indeed tasty, so much so that Erika, who is a professional chef, asked what the ingredients were and the waiter brought out the handwritten recipe book. There were some unexpected things beyond the maple syrup in the list, and it is a recommendable dish. However, we thought that it would taste much better over some jasmine rice. In fact, I did not like the sauce on the pasta at all - too sweet and cloying in that context.

Having not seen each other in 20 months, we just didn't want to leave. So we ordered a dessert to share, a brownie sundae. Whoah! It was an over the top large tower, and yes, it was delicious.

This place is a little tired, but they try and are very friendly. Erika and I both thought it had great potential with a little updating. Maybe we should send over Gordon Ramsay...

After eating that sundae, the kids had a lot of energy to run off, so we drove to a different part of the beach while the twins tore up and down in the sand to the setting of the sun over a calm and blue sea.