Erik David posted on April 14, 2010 11:28
Tiramisu Italian Restaurant in Quincy, Illinois
Last weekend we made a trip down to Tiramisu for a nice birthday meal. Tiramisu is an authentic Italian fine dining restaurant in Quincy, Illinois, and I had heard really good things about this place and have been meaning to try it for a while now. The whole experience was really great from the service to the atmosphere, and the meal was really fantastic and satisfying.
The place was nearly full yet we didn't have to wait for a table. Its interior was pretty standard for a casual sit-down restaurant, dim lighting, some Italian decor on the walls, and plenty of seating. The paper table cloths over the real table cloths, and menu printed on a sheet of copy paper seemed a bit odd for a nice restaurant, but it is Quincy, and good food is the only thing I was really looking for.
We were pretty hungry and wanted to try a wide variety of things so we decided to share two appetizers and each get an entre.
For our appetizers, we got the Scampi Italia, which is shrimp in a scampi sauce, and Salsiccia Spinaci, or Italian sausage with spinach. The Scampi was pretty good, it had 3 jumbo shrimp, asparagus, mushrooms, and artichoke hearts in a white wine sauce, but the Italian sausage was really amazing. It was in a tomato sauce with garlic and lots of sautéed spinach. The sausage had that really great classic Italian sausage flavor, and the sauce was really simple and complimented the meat really well, and it was rounded out perfectly with that acidic cooked spinach and garlic.
In addition to the appetizers we ordered, and the little house salad we got with our entre, we also had a continual supply of freshly baked bread. If you ask for some oil, they will bring you out a big bottle of oil which is infused with all sorts of great Italian flavors like hot peppers and herbs. They will also bring you out a dish with some really flavorful parmesean cheese, which you mix in the dipping oil to create an amazing dipping sauce for your bread. We finished off two loaves of bread this way, and I really could have eaten that stuff all night, it was that good.
For our main course, we ordered the daily special, which was a fresh tortalini stuffed with sausage, ham, peas, and cheese in a cream and spinach sauce. This dish was so flavorful and rich because of the use of these big flavor ingredients like ham, heavy cream, and parmesean cheese. The only part I didn't like about the dish was that the sauce smelled like Velveeta cheese to me, which was really odd because it didn't really taste like it, but maybe it did contain some.
For dessert we had to try their Tiramisu, because if they named a restaurant after it, it had to be good. It was layered with a marscapone cheese and cream mousse and little cakes dipped in espresso and liquor. The dessert was really fantastic even though the flavors were a bit more subtle than I would have liked. I was expecting big strong flavors, but it was really a delicate dessert that had really great flavors but was a bit subdued. I do think that a nice light-tasting fresh dessert like that was really the perfect finish to such a rich and flavorful meal.
Here are some high res photos of our meal:
