Chomp!
February 7, 2014
By Ron Aiken
February 7, 2014
Let’s go to Villa Tronco!
It’s funny the things we forget. Places, especially. How often have you heard someone say, such-and-such a place is closing and you respond by saying, No! I love that place! Haven’t been there in ages, though.
Which, of course, is why it is closing. I am sure it grates on owners of closing businesses to no end to hear customers they haven’t seen in years come up and tell them before they close how much they love and can’t believe they’re closing. Where the heck were you when we needed your business to stay afloat?,’ I imagine them saying to themselves, though truthfully, I imagine them using far more colorful language.
One such place that has seen more restaurants come and go than probably any other in Columbia is Villa Tronco’s (1213 Blanding St., 256-7677), and for good reason. On a recent Friday date night away from the less-cultivated tastes of the childrenses, my lovely fee-yon-say and I ducked in.
And how glad I am that we did. With so many new restaurants opening all the time, it’s easy to forget the ones who have been plying their trade for years (decades, in this case) successfully, easy to forget why they’re still around, doing what they do. It must be maddening at times for such dedicated people, I imagine, when they hear others about town going on and on about some new gimmicky place or other out in Harbison or wherever that they just have to try. Have you been to tilted kilt yet? Their pizza is the best!
(For the record, Chomp! has NOT been to Tilted Kilt. He does not even know if they serve pizza, nor does he care to find out.)
Now that I’m on the subject of pizza, however (and quite unexpectedly! Thank you, gods of transitions!), Villa Tronco actually introduced pizza to Columbia, so there. On Friday, however, we did not get a pizza, because as Chomp! has written about before, he is force-fed pizza no less than nine times a week (it’s possible, trust me) in a house with teenagers.
No, instead we enjoyed the opportunity to eat grown-up food. Well, one of us did. Chomp!’s bee-yootiful lady went with the Lasagna, which I will go ahead and show you right now!
How delicious does this look, right? It was INSANELY good.
Chomp!, meanwhile, was feeling a bit adventurous and went with the Villa Tronco Chicken. The chicken is sauteed in a sherry wine and cream sauce and topped with mushrooms, artichoke hearts and sun-dried tomatoes over linguine. Here’s what it looked like before I devoured it:
Chicken and a sherry cream sauce? With artichoke hearts? Will Chomp! ever order anything else from Villa Tronco? Can you say, No? Say it! No!
Of course, the handmade cheesecakes at Villa Tronco are legendary, so there was no way we were getting out of there without splitting one (we’re trying to be good by sharing a dessert, though we did experience that moment toward the end when you start sizing up how much of what’s left you think is yours versus how much of it you want, which are NEVER equal amounts, then both of you try to insist the other take the last big bite, then she takes it, then you secretly resent that she took it even though you offered and want full gentleman credit points for it. But of course what you really wanted was that last dang bite and you drive home in silence, as if somehow that last bite would have improved your life to some imaginarily magnificent degree).
We got the Amaretto Cheesecake, which looks like this:
Now this is cheesecake worth fighting over. Please, if you love one another, order your own slice and DO NOT SHARE. You don’t want to be riding home in silence like Chomp! did, cursing his loveable, generous spirit.
I encourage you, too, to remember Villa Tronco, and I definitely encourage you to go to Villa Tronco if someone suggests Tilted Kilt or some other such nonsense. It’s the least you can do to help truly support local folks who have been serving this community for more than 70 years. Cheers!
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