Bravo!

Our usual Friday nights are often mysterious and spontaneous (meaning: we have no real plans except find a restaurant with ample parking space). Our grumbling stomachs took us to Bravo, an Italian restaurant along HV Dela Costa, Salcedo Village. 

It is not fine dining but it "attempts" to be with its wine bottle per table (which they quickly remove as soon as you sit down, without giving you any time to even read the label). The lights are not dim enough and the chairs are your typical fastfood-type ones. But the place can pass off as the usual semi-dating place. You know, the place where you go when there is no real commitment yet in the relationship and you're trying to explore if there can be something.

 There are not so many people when we went there, just another group finishing a bottle of wine. 

Anyway, the food was a delight (from my untrained Italian palate anyway)!

We had Bravo pizza, solo size, which is actually 8 pieces fitting the usual dinner plate. Their description was "paper thin" and it was apt. The thin crust was crunchy and the toppings tasty. It combines sausages with bits of onions and lots of cheese. 

The pasta I ordered was named Gnocchi Boscaiola which is actually Italian sausage, mushroom in creamy tomato sauce. The sauce was "normal". What i actually liked was the pasta. It was not the usual spaghetti or penne. It was actually my first time to taste that kind of pasta (again, pardon my untrained Italian palate). 

The pasta itself was tube-liked and the "tube" is filled. The way it was cooked was just right and it made me really taste the pasta itself, even without the sauce. 

The house red wine that accompanied our meal was dry but it quite fit the meal we were having. 

Our pizza and pasta, combined with red wine and the quiet place, with its bossa and oldies background music, made us linger more on our dinner. This is seldom, I must say. I usually eat and run. But the meal, and the ambience, made me want to sit back and relax and talk about almost anything under the sun. 

I sure plan to go back and try again their other dishes, another fave restaurant in the making!

Wikipedia - Gnocchi (pronounced [ˈɲɔːki] in Italian; singular gnocco) is the Italian name for a variety of thick, soft noodle or dumpling. They may be made frompotato, semolina, ordinary wheat flour, bread crumbs, or other ingredients. Outside Italy, "gnocci" generally refers specifically to the kind made from potato, and with uniform shape. The irregular kind, regardless of ingredients, is known by numerous other names, including halušky and spätzle. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnocchi)