A Review: Mavi Casual Italian

We tried a new restaurant last night for our January meal out*. It's called Mavi Casual Italian, a small local chain of restaurants with one store right here in our neighborhood. The Mavi chain is something of a spin-off of the locally-famous Cascone chain of restaurants.

Orders are placed at the front counter and the food is brought to your table. If you're thinking it's sounds similar to Fazoli's, then think again. The food at Mavi's is good. And the atmosphere is a lot less pre-fab than Fazoli's.

The specialty at Mavi is spedini (sometimes spelled "speidini"). Definitions of spedini vary, but it's basically grilled meat, sometimes lightly breaded, sometimes skewered. Shane had "Frank's Diablo Chicken Spedini" -- the sauce was a slightly spicy marina -- with the Tossed Italian Salad. I had Soto Shrimp Spedini, which was shrimp in a lemon-white wine sauce with provolone cheese, mushrooms and artichoke hearts. I chose the Classic Caesar Salad. Kat had the (very generous) Kids' Penne with Meatball meal.

We also ordered the Cheese Ravioli with Meatball; those of you who've met Shane know he sometimes likes to have seconds. As it turned out, his spedini was enough and we brought the ravioli home for Kat's and my lunch today. All of the meals came with a slice of garlic toast, and the spedini meals included Alfredo penne pasta.

The food was very good, service was friendly and fast, and the restaurant was clean (and busy by the time we left around 6:30 p.m.). Our only disappointment was that they were out of tiramisu.

The prices ranged from $3.99 for Kat's meal, to $11.99 for my shrimp entree. We used a restaurant.com gift certificate and ended up paying just $17 for all four meals plus drinks (including the price of the discount gift certificate).

Our suburb doesn't have any other Italian restaurants, so we are pleased to have Mavi here. We'll be going back!

The Mavi Casual Italian locations are: 8678 NE Flintlock Rd in Liberty, 704 E. North Ave. in Belton, and 19321 E. 40 Highway in Independence.



* We try to go out for a meal just once a month, to someplace new or somewhere a little nicer than A drive-thru or pizza buffet. It doesn't always work out that way, but we try; we seem to appreciate dining out more the less we do it.

More Casual Friday

So I'm a day late. I'm also a dollar short. What else is new?

*****

The other day I was talking to Shane when Kat brought the nail clippers and sat them on the desk beside me. I continued my conversation, picked up the clippers and put them back in the bathroom. Just a minute or so later, Kat was back with them, and in a stern voice said, "I can't tell you again! I need my fingernails cut!"

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Kat gets impatient when I'm on the computer. Today she came in asked me if I was ready to click X yet.

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Ever make a meal that was so bad you just wanted it to disappear? Maybe you're the type who goes to extremes to guard your secret recipe. Or maybe you're afraid of coming out to all your macho hunting buddies that you're in touch with your inner chef. If so, here's just the thing for you.

Casual Friday: What's In A Name?

Yesterday, my friend ajooja said he liked the idea of his grandson coming up with a cute nickname for him. I suggested the boy call him ajooja. It's all good until someone asks the kid what it means.

That sent my thoughts off on a tangent -- a common occurrence, yes -- and I realized I could become "Grannie Annie". Cute enough. Better than plain ol' Annie Jones, anyway.

That sent me off on another tangent (see, I told you). I wondered if any other bloggers would be willing to let their kids or grandkids call them by their "bloganyms".

Could Rainbow Man shout, "Blue! The puppy just peed on the floor again!"?

Will Baby Morris' first word be "Vi-Vi" instead of "Ma-Ma"?

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Now that I think of it, it's probably not such a good idea after all.

I mean, what if your kid got lost at the super mega center and decided to have you paged?

Casual Friday: A Bunch of Random Thoughts

One day last week, the daycare lady hadn't arrived by the time we did, so I told Kat we'd just drive around for a few minutes. I drove past the daycare, took a right turn, drove a couple of blocks and took another right turn. Kat said, "Hey, we're not driving around; we're driving a square!"

*****

This was at the edge of our garage door a couple of nights ago. Is it a baby tarantula? I think it is. Our neighbor and his girlfriend were over, and she's one of those people who doesn't want to kill anything, so we didn't kill it. Instead, we let it eat Kat's toes, then we threw it over the other neighbor's privacy fence onto the car our neighbors are hiding so that they don't have to get it licensed. Maybe we should have killed it and hung it up for a Halloween decoration.

For those of you into this sort of thing: Pic 3, Pic 4, Pic 5, Pic 6

*****

Here's fashionista Kat Jones sporting an animal print butterfly on her shirt, a pumpkin beret, Grinch house shoes and a stick horse. It's going to be all the rage this season.