tommy and i decided to go out for dinner last night at spezie, mostly because we hadn't seen too much of each other all week due to his crazy-ass work, and also because we apparently did not get enough italian food during the 375 meals we had while in italy. also my italian food experience in DC is limited to sette up in dupont (update: this is actually a lie. tommy just reminded me that i have been to, like, every italian restaurant in the city, including galileo, goldoni's and obelisk, which was my favorite. scusi the premature alzheimers), and while they have good pizza, the other stuff is just okay, i had heard amazing things about spezie and wanted to see if we could actually get great italian food outside of, you know, italy.

spezie is located down around 18th and L, and it's a cute spot with a nice interior and spacious seating. the service was excellent throughout the entire meal. things started off well with a bread basket + this olive paste that was delicious, and we ordered two glasses of a sicilian red that the waiter recommended. since neither of us were extremely hungry, we decided to forgo a secondi and just get antipasti and pasta dishes. tommy's antipasto was fabulous - it was roasted peppers in a sauce of truffle oil and gorgonzola. mmmm. only drawback was that he smelled like truffles well into the next morning. ewww. my antipasto was good as well but i thought the serving size was way too large; i had a huge pile of prosciutto di parma with mozzarella di bufala. i just felt like something about it was a bit off - it lacked a little bit of flavor and could have used an extra drizzle of olive oil.

the pasta, however - oi vey. well, actually tommy liked his pasta but didn't think it was the best thing ever eaten. he had the bucatini all’amatriciana, which is thick, long tubes of pasta with pancetta and tomato sauce. it was good but he said there was way too much pancetta in the sauce and so it was uber salty. i, on the other hand, had the ravioli porcini and pistacchio - ravioli stuffed with porcini mushrooms and served in a pistachio sauce. man, i love italian food - they use pistachios in everything from pasta sauces to gelato and it is DELICIOUS. that cream sauce, i could have eaten it with a spoon, and the ravioli was perfectly cooked. it was probably some of the best pasta i'd had since the pear pasta i had in florence that i raved about. i guess i'm a fan of slightly sweet pasta.

then it was on to dessert, and this is where i became SEVERELY disappointed. the menu advertisted gelati della casa, and i was like, wahey, gelato! but then i thought about it and every american italian restaurant i've been that's claimed to have gelato just turned out to serve ice cream and it is for crap. but i ordered it here anyway, and, guess what - it was just ice cream! don't get me wrong - it was EXCELLENT ice cream. but why can't real italian restaurants serve real gelato? why, actually, can't you get real gelato in the u.s. ANYWHERE?! this is something that always eludes me. everyone i've ever known who's been to italy comes back raving, justifiably, about the gelato. if anyone ever opened a real gelato store here they would make a shitload of money. so why don't they?! answer me that, bloggers.

anyway, overall i'd definitely recommend spezie, especially the pasta. i think it'd be a nice spot for lunch as the lunch menu is a bit cheaper than the dinner one and you can sit at the bar in the front and watch the crazy L street people go by.