Dinner at Aperitivo Bistro

As promised, here is part one of my Saturday adventures. Last night, Chris and I decided to go to Aperitivo Bistro in Schenectady before the Hellions of Troy Roller Derby bout. Aperitivo is described as an Italian Fusion restaurant!

We thought since it was Saturday evening that we might need reservations, so I made them online on their website for 5:00PM…but it turned out that Aperitivo opens at 5:00PM, so we didn’t really need them, as there weren’t many people in the restaurant.

I really liked the atmosphere though, and Chris mentioned how he liked the color scheme. It was nice! The blue lights hanging from the ceiling added a nice ambiance!

So, first things first…we looked at the wine menu.

Most of the wines on the list were pretty expensive, so, we tried to stay under $30 a bottle, and went with a bottle of D’Osaria Pinot Grigio from Italy.

The wine was light and fresh, which I really liked. I feel like it went great with our food.

First the waitress brought out rosemary foccacia bread with a red pepper brusectta to top it with it. I had to control myself with the bread, and thankfully only ate two pieces.

Aperitivo is mainly a tapas restaurant, so they had a lot of small plates on the menu. We had a hard time deciding what to start with since everything looked so good! Eventually we chose the Calamari, which came with arugula (!) and a sweet chili glaze. If you didn’t know, I have a slight obsession with arugula. It’s my favorite green! It tasted excellent with the calamari. I also have a thing for fried squid. And I enjoy eating the fried tentacles. Is that weird? They are just so crispy and delicious! Chris said he likes the fried rings of calamari better because they have a better texture. Which I can agree with too.

Our second small plate was none other than the goat cheese croquettes. Here is another obsession of mine: goat cheese. On the menu it is described as toasted almond goat cheese croquettes, fig jam, rosemary honey. The croquettes were pretty tasty, but I would have liked more of them on the plate. I need more goat cheese in my life!

Then it came time for us to order our main dinner, and everything looked so good we didn’t know what to get…but then we took a look at the pizza menu and thought pizza would be it! We went with the Marghertia Pizza! Roma tomato, fresh mozzarella and basil. Yum! We ordered it on the whole wheat shell. I loved that you had a choice whether or not to order the pizza on whole wheat or white, since most places don’t let you choose!

The crust was extremely thin, which was actually a good thing because it makes it healthier for you! But, I do admit, I love a thick crust pizza. But it was really good none the less. And it was steaming hot! The tomatoes actually tasted really fresh too, which was a plus! I would have liked a bit more cheese though.

Then came time for dessert, of course, since we both seemed to save room.

  

We ordered two and split them I got the dessert from the specials menu which was a peach crepe stuffed with mascarpone cheese! To die for! I actually can’t remember ever having anything with mascarpone cheese, but the flavor tasted familiar, so I probably have. It was light and creamy and felt like heaven in my mouth! Yum. I ate one half and Chris ate the other.

He ordered the colossal triple chocolate chip cookie. Just the name of that dessert sounds amazing, right?

Umm…yeah. I had the top half of that cookie sandwich. The cookie tasted home made! But I would have liked it if it were a bit more on the chewier side though, since I like my cookies chewy and gooey. But, I won’t complain…

We were really happy with our experience at Aperitivo. It was a bit on the expensive side, but the dishes were presented well and our server was excellent. It would make a great pre-theater place to have dinner, since it is located right next to Proctors.

So, this was only part one of my night, here is a preview of part two:

Stay tuned!