it was a rainy day here in fresno wednesday & i had the day off. i was going to play golf in the morning, but with the rain i decided to let the babysitter stay home & assume baby duty myself for the morning. by the time katy got home from school (final student teaching) at 1230, i had decided we needed to go have a nice lunch at a nice restaurant after the normal lunch rush had subsided. (our 1-year-old son, ethan, is not very restaurant friendly at this stage of his life.) after a brief discussion, we decided on campagnia, a nice, very popular restaurant located in a corner strip mall in a residential area of north fresno. this particular strip mall houses the supermarket, bank, drugstore & blockbuster video store that we frequent & it is only a few blocks from our house. due to this proximity & convenience, i have tried very hard to really like this restaurant. i have had 6 lunches & 4 dinners here.
they have an inside dining room & an all weather patio; we chose to be seated inside. they were a bit busier than i expected, but since they are in a residential area, i should have expected more late lunch business.
shortly after we were seated, our server arrived to take our drink order & i chose the only pinot noir they had by the glass, since i thought it would go well with the goat cheese appetizer i intended to order. katy had water.
we ordered the goat cheese appetizer & katy ordered the salmon entree & i ordered the rib eye.
the goat cheese appetizer was a ball of goat cheese encrusted with cracked black pepper sitting in a bowl of warm olive oil with roasted cloves of garlic & sundried tomatoes accompanied by toasted triangles of their pizza dough as crackers. this was not the best variation on this theme that i have had, but it was acceptable.
the pinot was a reasonable match for this dish & served in a pretty darned good glass
. i don't remember what it was, but it was good. katy & i took turns attending to ethan's needs, so i didn't finish this generously poured glass before my steak arrived with my glass of '99 franciscan oakville caberne
t. katy finished the pinot with her salmon.
my steak was ordered medium-rare & it arrived medium-well
. katy's salmon was very overcooked. we sent both entrees back & moved from the dining room, where some leisurely lunchtime diners were lingering peacefully over their meals, to the patio, which was now empty & allowed space for ethan to toddle around & explore various potted plants, flower beds & small fountains.
the second steak was cooked correctly, but katy felt her salmon was still a bit overcooked
. she surmised that this might be unavoidable since the salmon was probably pre-cooked
& merely grilled to warm it up & give it a crust on the outside. she did, more or less, enjoy her salmon. we kept & ate the second renditions.
upon sampling my second steak, which was billed as a blackened rib eye, i now encountered the sauce
, which was slathered somewhat liberally over the top of the steak & apparently consisted of more or less equal parts horseradish, mustard & mayonnaise. this sauce completely overpowered the meat & the wine
. this was unacceptable so i scraped it off as best i could & ate it. it was better but the sauce residue was still pervasive & this was less enjoyable than it should have been. the roasted potatoes were ok & the vegetables must have been forgettable, because i have forgotten them completely. no, now i remember, they were julienned slivers of carrots & zucchini with butter & they were forgettable.
the service was very good, but the food preparation was lacking. i have enjoyed 2 of the 4 dinners i have had here & been disappointed the other 2 times. none of the lunches i have had here were any better than acceptable. i'll probably go back
out of laziness, since they are so conviently located.
for what it's worth, the '99 franciscan oakville cab i had was the highlight of the lunch; it was very, very good.