REVIEW: Flying Tomato--Graham

Wayne, Maya and I tried a new rstaurant tonight, so I decided to do a little review. I've never done a restaurant review before, so bear with me.

The restaurant is Flying Tomato and it located in Graham, which is a short hop from our house. Convenient, so they gain points just for location. Graham doesn't have much to offer in the way of good food, so I know lots of people who have been anticipating the opening of Flying Tomato.

We got there at about 6:45 or so, and we had about a 15 minute wait. My only complaint about the reception area is that I stood right at the desk for, oh, 4 minutes or so before anyone even acknowledged me, even though there were three employees there at any given time. A polite, "Hello, our hostess will be right with you" would have been wonderful.

The waiting area is crowded and chilly. Actually, the whole restaurant is quite cold, but that may be by design. We were quick to shovel our food and get out of there because I was freezing my ass off.

The decor is clean. Concrete floors and exposed ceilings, which also contributes to the chill. The colors are your typical colors seen in any Italian restaurant these days: reds, oranges, yellows. There are 6lb tomato cans all over, and they use those to set the pizza upon at your table. The tables are covered in red and white checked cloths with white butcher paper over top. Maya loves that because it gives her a huge canvas upon which to create her latest masterpiece. The crayons were a variety of colors, which is a nice change. At a lot of restaurants the kids get a cup (or an tomato paste can, in this case) which is filled with only green and blue crayons. Several of them. Is it so hard to give a kid a rainbow of color crayons?

The pizza is wood fired, which we love (The Rock is the best pizza around). There is also a good selection of entrees and salads and appetizers.

We ordered calimari, which was served with aioli. Love aioli. It was really good. It had the rings and the bodies. We like the bodies. The serving was smaller than what we get at other restaurants, but that was okay. One does not need to fill up on appetizer. It was just the three of us, so if we have the other two girls, we will definitely need to order two orders of calimari.

Our server, Aubrey, brought us bread after the appetizer. It was really good and tatsed freshly baked. It was cold; I think it would have been better heated up just a bit. It's served with garlic butter, which has chunks of garlic in it. It was really good.

Wayne ordered the Sicilian pizza ($13.99); I ordered the flying parm (chicken parm)($14.99); Maya ordered spaghetti with meat sauce.

Wayne said the pizza was awesome. Nice thin crust and the meats were good. he said the sauce was excellent. He said it was only missing the fresh basil that is apparently usually found on a Sicilian pizza.

My chicken parm was HUGE. It was easily two nights worth of dinner. The sauce was so good; it tasted like it was homemade. The chicken parm wasn't salty. A lot of Italian places have really salty chicken parm. I wish they had frshly grated parmesan to put on pasta, but they have good ol' Kraft that you shake out of a glass container.

Maya had spaghetti, which was a massive portion. Easily three meals for her. The same tasty sauce.

We were all very satisfied with our meal. I have no idea how much it cost, though, since Wayne picked up the bill. I'll add that info later.

We skipped dessert, but the choices were typical Italian restaurant fare. I don't know how much was house made and how much is brought in.

There is a bar. Yea! It's small, but it was busy. People in Puyallup/Graham must like to drink :-) Wayne ordered his usual: vodka martini, dirty on the rocks. He had two, and they were also huge. Sometimes they are served in glasses not much bigger than a shot glass, so the huge glasses were a surprise.

Our server was really nice. the restaurant has been open for two weeks, and she has been a waitress for exactly two weeks. She seemed a bit afraid of screwing up, but she was very competent and checked in with us a lot.

We will definitely be back, and I can't wait to try the pizza. The margherita is always a favorite of mine, but they have a Thai pizza that looks interesting. The lasagna takes two days to make, so it is probably really good; everyone knows that lasagna is better the second day.

Oh, and they do delivery!

Flying Tomato Italian Grill
(253) 875-0770