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Steph got me a book about my hometown,
Car Bombs to Cookie Tables.
Several authors offer thoughts about varying memories, one
specifically about the foods of the indigenous. In the chapter
titled Saudade, the author waxes in a melancholy way about not
having ready access to things like Briar Hill pizza, gorgeous
wedding soup, and monkey salad having moved out of the Valley. One
paragraph in particular lauded a simple treat I have never tried the
cheese puff. Served at the Mount Carmel Festival (a fund-raising
celebration for big “C” Catholics of Italian descent) I looked it up
on line, marked the date from the Facebook page and waited a year.
The time has come! |
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First off. I am a moron. We walked the trucks and trailers, no sign of the puffs. We asked a couple of folks, got only confused stares. They told us to go inside where the silent auction and other festivities were being held. So, my stupidity? There are three Mount Carmel Festivals in the greater Youngstown area. The one in Niles is the only one that has cheese puffs. It was last week. We are waiting another year. They are never going to live up to the anticipation. Oh, well. I'm Dumb. |
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 The Church |
 The Lot Full Of Food |
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 This Has Got To Be Where The Puffs Are |
 Right? |
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The downtown festival has the expected county fair rides, games, and
foods. It has a few things the fairs do not. Games of chance, check.
Much better customer service, check. We even got complimentary golf
cart rides from the parking lots to the gate and back. There is also
Italian food, just no puffs. There is a catering company providing
options inside and we split an Italian beef sandwich, a meatball
splash, cavatelli, and polenta. Having tried three Italian beef
sandwiches in Chicago (1,
2, 3) there is
no competition at all. It’s not the same beast to start with, hard
roll, sliced beef, a tiny bit of heavily spiced red gravy, not bad,
but again, no comparison. They also sliced the beef with the grain
instead of across making for a chewier than desired sandwich. The
meatball splash was much more of a meatball sub (way less sauce in a
closed bun). But their meatballs are tasty and I didn’t care as much
for their sauce as I hoped I would. A couple of salty cheeses and
you had an improvement over the beef sandwich.
Better still were the cavatelli. Not sure how they are pulling it
off with the numbers they are serving but the pasta is done with the
grace and perfection of DaVinci himself. Flavorful, just toothy,
wonderful in itself. It was on the pasta I had trouble with the
sauce, what looked a clean smooth tomato sauce, we found strong
flavors of aromatic veggies and spices and herbs to the detriment of
the sauce. Topping with another meatball brought it back towards the
positive. Lastly, a large block of corny polenta topped with a
sausage sauce. I don’t know if it was a different sauce base, if the
sausage balanced out the onion/garlic/basil punch, or if the sweet
salty block of grits just worked better with the sauce, but they
really hit the ground running with this one. It was really good. Mom
said she had another version of it at a local restaurant, and didn’t
care for it, but found this tasty. |
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 The Beef Struggled Some |
 Meatballs Much Better |
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 Exceptional Pasta & Meat, Less So The Sauce |
 This Worked All The Way Around |
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No car bombs, but there was a cookie table and we purchased light flaky clothes pins filled with cream cheese, crunchy and nutty kipfel, and tiramisu with enough coffee to make Juan Valdez blush. Tasty. Even when there are a couple of things not perfectly up your alley, it’s nice to go home and enjoy memories and make some new ones. You know what would be a nice new memory? (Hear in the tone of Marlon Brando Yelling in Streetcar Named Desire) CHEESE
PUFFS!!! |
 Baby Lady Fingers With Cream Cheese Filling |
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 Sweet Nutty Kipfel |
 Bad
Serious Coffee Sweetness |
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| Ratings | |||||||
 Food |
 Service |
 Ambiance |
 What's Best |
 What's Worst |
 Overall |
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| C | B | C+ | B | D | C | ||
| Polenta & Dessert | Beef | ||||||