Kirk, Cathy, other yosoers, and many FOYs are eating, thinking, and searching for ultimate tastes. ed (from Yuma), however, is just blogging about a new place in Yuma.
Sad to say, Mustard's is no longer in business as of August 2009. According to the local paper, the location will be taken by Das Bratwurst House.
The opening of a new restaurant in Yuma is a big deal -- particularly if the restaurant is neither a chain nor a Mexican eatery. So when the Munch Lunch Bunch (a group of us who eat Friday lunch together most weeks) descended upon Mustard's Italian restaurant at the corner of Madison and Second, we were excited and hopeful:
The meal started off well, as we were all given a small bowl of marinara and slices of Italian bread (most likely from La Brea):
The warm marinara was tasty and tomatoey, but very mildly flavored, somewhat lacking in herbs and spice.
I ordered one of the lunch specials that day, crab raviolis (8.95?). In a fairly short period of time, the plate of raviolis arrived looking very pretty:
I liked that the raviolis were not overcooked, and the pasta still had some chew. Although not especially rich, the light cream sauce was smooth and complemented the raviolis and the diced vegetables. At first taste, I thought that the light green bits on top of the pasta were pieces of pickled artichoke hearts for they contributed a slight sour note to the dish. Further tastes and a closer look made me aware that these were slices of pepperoncini. They added complexity and contrast to the textures and flavors of the dish. The only shortcoming of the raviolis was the lack of much crab flavor in their fillings. Well, okay, maybe the lack of any crab flavor.
The raviolis came with a nice little side salad, mixed baby greens and romaine tossed with a light Italian dressing containing little dots of grated cheese. The tomato slice and red onion slices added a bit of color and variety:
Friends had a couple of different sandwiches (meatball and grilled beef and mushroom), neither of which looked exceptional. Both came with an underdressed tricolored rotini salad with chunks of mozzarella. Others selected the spaghetti with shrimp, mushroom, and spinach cream sauce:
I didn't get a bite of this, but it disappeared quickly and those who ordered it were very pleased. Service throughout lunch was a bit harried - with one server working several tables - but was friendly and competent.
This seemed like a restaurant worth returning to, so Tina and I soon arrived to try a dinner at Mustard's. This meal was a bit more problematical, although it started off well with the bread and marinara. In addition, we had brought a bottle of wine, which was opened by our helpful server, who also provided excellent full sized stemware. We felt the $10 corkage was perfectly appropriate for the service and the glasses.
Wanting to try a variety of items, we ordered a minestrone soup (3.95) and the zucchini and chickpea salad (6.95). We were not sure what to expect with the salad, as neither of us had heard of such a thing before, but we certainly weren't expecting what showed up on the table:
The same mixture of greens as in the lunch salad were topped with pepperoncini slices, sizable chunks of raw zucchini, and (no, I am not making this up) kernels of canned hominy. Say what? Someone can't tell the difference between hominy and chickpeas? The salad also had no dressing; I guess we should've said something, but maybe zucchini and hominy salads never have dressings. ;-)
The soup was also rather unusual, as it had little in common with any minestrone (or for that matter most any other soup) I have ever eaten before:
First, while the broth (if that's the right term for the liquid here) was appropriately reddish, it was largely flavored by the same marinara sauce that came with the bread. No deep savory stock whatsoever. The ingredients also seemed a little out of the ordinary. Not only were there no chickpeas (no surprise considering), but there were no beans of any sort. Instead, slices of nearly raw mushroom, chunks of undercooked zucchini, bits of diced tomato, and fresh frozen peas swam in the diluted marinara. To be truthful, the soup wasn't horrible - it just wasn't minestrone.
At the bottom of the bowl, lay another surprise, multicolored tortellini:
As I fished one of these out of the soup, I realized that the minestrone soup listed on the menu was the same as the tortellini soup. Well, I suppose that's one way to keep inventory modest.
Tina had opted for the penne with tomato, fresh basil, and garlic sauce (10.95):
This dish was okay, I guess, but certainly far from spectacular. Part of the problem was with the fresh tomatoes; typical supermarket slicers simply didn't bring enough flavor to the dish. Similarly, the few fresh basil leaves added little, and I can't recall much garlic either. While the dish was not terrible, it was not terribly good either.
I opted for the dinner special, which was some pork dish called carnaval (sp?)(18.95, if memory serves). It arrived looking like this:
Two thin boneless slices of pork loin were topped with undercooked spinach leaves, ricotta cheese, melted mozzarella cheese, shrimp, and some kind of grated cheese. The rest of the large platter was filled with penne pasta topped with what seemed to be a blend of the marinara sauce with the cream sauce that had been on the lunchtime raviolis.
Though the pasta was not overcooked, it was generally flavorless. The pork with all of its toppings, on the other hand, was bizarre -- the sort of melange one might expect of a faux Italian restaurant like Olive Garden:
The combination of ingredients never came together, and I left nearly half of the pork uneaten. To be fair, the waitperson's description of the dish should have warned me about what was coming - but sometimes imagination just falls short of reality.
As I was finishing the meal (or more accurately, as the meal was finishing me), I overheard the chef/owner explaining to another table that lunches at the restaurant had been going well, but that there were still some glitches with the dinners. I couldn't have said it better. Maybe next time.
Postscript:
Since I wrote the first draft of this post, there has been a next time. I had been wine tasting with some friends at Old Town Wine Cellar (which is just 2 blocks away from Mustard's) and we decided to bring a few bottles with us and have a meal. Unfortunately, I did not have my camera, but here's a brief summary anyway:
We shared the sausage and spinach appetizer, and it was excellent. Full flavored and well thought out with a lot of garlic and some olive oil, each slice of the spicy sausage sitting on a few leaves of the lightly sauteed greens.
This night the carnaval was made with veal (23.95), but it was better prepared (the spinach wasn't raw, for example), and the veal went much better with the shrimp and cheeses. I finally got a taste of the shrimp and spaghetti dish, and the shrimp were perfectly cooked, and the whole dish was good. I had the chicken marsala (15.95), which I liked. The unbreaded chicken was completely covered with a very generous serving of mushrooms, and the wine sauce (while not tasting strongly of marsala) complemented both the chicken and the 'shrooms and was not sweet (I hate cloyingly sweet marsala sauces).
Only negative notes: the side of penne pasta that comes with the chicken dishes was topped with an underflavored, but homemade tomato sauce. It cried out for some good grated cheese, but none was there. I was also unhappy with the side salad, which had been good on my first visit. This night it lacked any baby lettuces and was severely underdressed. When I say severely underdressed, think burlesque dancer. It also tasted like it had been sitting in a refrigerator for hours (days?) .
I know that this post is somewhat snarky, and I hate dwelling on a restaurant's shortcomings. Also I would like this place to succeed. We need more independent and interesting dining choices here. Still, if this modest eatery is going to become a success, it needs to get better and more consistent.
Mustard's Italian Food. Madison & Second, Yuma AZ. (928) 345-9013:
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