Mucho Gusto

It's been a while since I wrote a restaurant review I feel. But lucky for you (and for me) the hubby and I discovered a tasty little Italian place earlier this week.

We were celebrating some good work I had done at the office so it was my pick. Our qualifiers were moderate price point, not a chain, outside of downtown and per the hubby's request, Italian. I poked around on Yelp and came up with a brand new place, Gusto Italian Kitchen & Wine Bar.

It's in the Rosedale neighborhood of Austin (which I find has all kinds of places I like) which meant central-ish but without the inconveniences of being smack in town. When we got inside we found this place to be cute, cute, cute! A kinda funky, art deco motif with murals on the walls and plenty of warm colors. It was about 75% full so no wait for a table. We sat at a high top in the wine bar-ish area. I say "ish" because while we were close to the bar, I didn't feel like I was sitting "in the bar;" it still had a restaurant feel.

I had a delicious glass of chardonnay, Ross had an iced tea and we split the antipasti appetizer. The whole appetizer was good but I especially loved the green olives (I ate all but one and only stopped at that point because Ross called me on not saving any for him). For my entree I had the chicken wrapped in prosciutto with a side of mashed potatoes and sauteed spinach. DELICIOUS. It was dressed in a tasty cream sauce and the portion was just right. Ross ordered the Italian job pizza which included sausage, mozzarella cheese, goat cheese, red peppers and onion. Very tasty gourmet pizza indeed.

The service was pretty good too. When I asked the waiter about the menu, specifically would it change seasonally, even though he didn't know the answer he was very quick to bring me a comment card to give all my feedback through.

Our total bill, with tip, was $55 so from a price stance, also pretty good. Definitely someplace you could go monthly if you were so inclined.

VERDICT: We're going again. Wanna double date?