One of the nice things about the place where I work is that we get Christmas Eve off as well as Christmas Day. Since Christmas Eve fell on a Saturday this year, I got Friday, December 23 as the effective holiday – a rare day Downtown during work week lunchtime. I knew I had to find something good to eat.
I wandered up to Court Square and The Barking Lot, hoping to find a food truck, but none were out. “Well, now what?” I thought. Then it occurred to me: “What about Rizzo’s Diner?” The diner on G.E. Patterson has been open two months, but I had not yet made a visit, which is a shame considering my friend and former neighbor Michael “Rizzo” Patrick is executive chef and operating partner. Since it was a nice day, I decided to skip the trolley and make the trek to South Main on foot.
My server Steven, also a friend and a current neighbor, showed me to my table and read off the specials. I decided to go with the Chef’s Blue Plate Special of the day. It was chorizo-stuffed cabbage, with rice and tomatoes. There were five side items available and I got to pick three of them: I went with the garlic mashed potatoes, steamed spinach, and squash casserole. (The two other choices were steamed snow peas and cheese grits.)
My food was out fairly quickly, under 10 minutes I would guess. So, this is a place you can go for lunch and expect to get back to the office fairly quickly. I was about to dig in, then I realized… I FORGOT to order the item on the menu that I’d most wanted to try! Folks have raved about Michael Patrick’s cheeseburger soup. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t started with it. I called Steven over and put in an order. The Chef kept my main course warm in the kitchen for me, and the soup was out in minutes.
The name pretty much says it all. It’s a bowl of soup that tastes like a cheeseburger. I detected a touch of Rotel, I believe. Quite tasty. I polished off my soup and then it was on to the main course:
Really good. I think the spinach was my favorite of the three vegetables, but it’s a hard call because all three were delicious. I liked dipping the garlic mashed potatoes in the sauce that covered the entree. The spiciness of the chorizo was a good contrast to the taste of the cabbage. All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable lunch.
The Blue Plate Special changes from one day to the next, but if you “Like” the diner on Facebook you’ll be informed what’s on the menu. The meat-and-three is true to the diner concept, but once you taste it, you know this is no ordinary meat-and-three… rather, one prepared by the hand of an experienced chef. Rizzo’s is open Tuesday-Sunday for lunch, and Monday-Saturday for dinner and Sunday for brunch. I encourage everyone Downtown to get in there and eat some good food and support our friend Michael.
(Disclosure: When the check came, it appeared that the Blue Plate Special had been comped. That was a nice surprise that I wasn’t expecting. However, I want to stress that the special was worth every penny of its $10 menu price.)