Eats: Primizie

We must have driven past Primizie a dozen times without even noticing it was there, tucked in on the first floor of all that newly built fancy-ness on 11th street.  We LURVE Italian food, and while East Austin has its fair share of places to grab a bite, I think we’ve all noticed that our choices for east-side dining are Mexican, Mexican, and more Mexican.  We love a good enchilada and a cerveza as much as the next guy, but we were psyched to hear of a good Italian place in the ‘hood. 

Now, this ain’t your mama’s Italian spaghetti and meatballs. In fact, we saw few of the “traditional” Italian dishes on the menu. What we did see was a nice wine list plus yummy daily drink specials.  We were lucky and caught the tail-end of happy hour, so we partook of a lemon-basil mojito. It was super refreshing on a hot Texas day.  Our dining buddies had a glass of wine, which, we all noted, was a pretty generous portion. 

We were generally happy with our dishes all around, but, be warned, the sausage is muy Italiano with lots of spicy herbs and stuff.  A little too much for our taste, but hey.  To each his own.  The fettucini alfredo on our friend’s plate looked particularly good, and we wished we’d ordered that.  None of that gloppy, greasy alfredo sauce seen in your typical American-Italian fare, just a nice cream sauce and super-fresh pasta.

Dessert was a very tasty lemon cheesecake (nice and fluffy with great, fresh flavor), and a couple of cookies, also a big hit.

As for ambiance? It’s very clean and modern with big windows and plenty of elbow room. No kitsch. No gimmicks. I think they figured the food would speak for itself )and rightly so). And service was good, though we detected an odd accent on our waitress that disappeared and then reappeared throughout the meal… witness protection program? Or should we say, vitness protection program?  Also noted: cute t-shirts on all the staff.  Where do we get one of those?

Overall verdict: yum. The freshness of everything from the basil in the mojito to the pasta on the plate was awesome. And we would totally come back just to enjoy happy hour and appetizers.

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