Early this week I had asked Alex and Chloe if they wanted to pick the cuisine for this week’s Dining with Dad. They decided that they did want to pick and started by eliminating other cuisines before eventually being left with Italian. The first place I tried to make a reservation for was already booked for both Friday and Saturday! I’ll have to keep note of it and try it at some point. My next choice was Carfagnas which had reservations available.

We arrived a little early so I was able to visit their liquor store. As soon as I walked in they were offering free samples of Tequila. How can I say no to that? I was able to find a couple bourbons that I haven’t tried before that I was excited to see. Hopefully they live up to the hype.

After checking out from the liquor store we walked through the grocery store. Right outside the liquor store was their fresh desserts and the kids were thinking we would stop over there after dinner to pick something out. We did end up doing that actually after dinner, with Chloe getting a classic Tiramisu and Alex getting a puff pastry filled with pistachio creme.

We finally made it to the restaurant and were seated right away given that we had a reservation. We were seated in a small room at the back of the restaurant which only had 3 tables in the room. Chloe actually noted that there was a sign on the wall showing that the max occupancy of the room was only 10 people. It was nice being secluded like that.

Our server Brandon showed up to get our drinks right away. When he came back he mentioned that their special appetizer was garlic bread with a side of marinara. Chloe’s eyes lit up a bit so I immediately said, “Yes please! We’ll take that.” We didn’t realize that they offered some bread already but hey, you can never have too much bread! The loaf of bread came out with a garlic sauce that was very tasty! I had to keep reminding the kids that more food was coming and not to fill up too much on it.

Chloe ended up seeing Wedding Soup and got excited as she loves that. I told her to not worry about not having much room for her dinner because she could always take leftovers home (which she did). So she decided to get the soup. I told Alex that he could get a soup or salad as well and he went for the Wedding soup as well. Since they were getting something, I decided to get a salad. I went for the Apple Walnut salad which was absolutely incredible.

Finally we’re on the entrees. As always, ladies first so we’ll start with Chloe. She had mentioned to me a couple weeks ago that she wanted to have pesto pasta again as she had it for the first time a few months ago. I wanted to point out to her that they had a chicken pesto dish in case she really did want that. However, she just couldn’t sway herself away from the very classic spaghetti and meatballs. Many times she doesn’t really like the meatballs that come with spaghetti but she loved these meatballs.

Alex was looking over the menu for quite a while. I mentioned that there was two sides to the menu so he was checking out absolutely all the options. After Chloe and I knew what we wanted I asked Alex if he had finally decided. He was and said he was going for the lasagna. I told him that the only time I had been to Carfagna’s, that’s what I got and it was delicious. That seemed to solidify his decision. It was a huge serving and he did well to eat half of it.

I also wanted the lasagna, but didn’t really want an entire plate full of it. I really wanted to balance a little more protein with all the carbs from the pasta. Based on that premise, I found the perfect dish on the menu. At the bottom of their signature pasta list was the Carfagna’s Meat Combination. It comes with Chicken parmigiana, lasagna, meat ravioli, and meatballs. It was the perfect combination and just what I was wanting. I saved much of the lasagna for Alex to take home as the rest of the dish filled me up!