My wife Lori and I were once again exploring downtown McKinney trying to find another great place to eat. I wanted to eat at a little French Bistro we had passed about a month ago, but they were closed for a family vacation or something. I wasn't really in the mood to eat at one of the pubs there downtown so we bypassed them. We tried to get into a Steak place, without reservations once again, NOPE....not gonna happen. We walked back to the lounge/bar area to see if there were any tables and of course there were not. Once again we were told they were solidly booked for three more hours but we saw tons of open tables; their loss.
We walked passed an Italian restaurant and checked out the menu which was displayed in the window. Again, I'm not a huge Italian food fan but the menu looked very promising. Not that I was going to order it, but seeing sweetbreads on the menu definitely piqued my interest.
The apparent owner of the restaurant greeted us with a thick Italian accent and was somewhat dismayed when we said we did not have reservations, but much less so than the other restaurants we had visited sans-reservations. We were shown almost immediately to a table and were immediately greeted by an extremely friendly waitress. The menu was ginormous and the choices abounded. I saw a nearby table devour the calamari and it was recommended by our waitress so I chose to start with that and Lori chose a house salad. The calamari came out piping hot with a side of homemade marinara sauce. The sauce was perfect and very fresh and complimented the perfectly cooked calamari. Our waitress set a plate in front of Lori for the calamari which we both quietly giggled at since anyone that knows Lori knows that she does not like seafood at all. The waitress came back after a number of minutes and noticed that Lori had not used her plate. She was extremely kind and apologized for putting the plate in front of Lori assuming she was going to partake in the calamari awesomeness. Lori's salad was topped with an in-house made vinaigrette which was also surprisingly good and not your normal salad dressing. I sampled a bite and was very impressed with its flavor complexity.
After mulling over the many choices in my head, I decided on the veal saltimbocca for my main course and Lori went with the chicken alfredo. I've had saltimbocca before as mentioned at Kenny's Italian Kitchen and that was kind of what I was expecting. This was very different from that version, albeit very good. The veal at Rugerri's was extremely thin and very tender with a small layer of prosciutto on top covered in a very light sauce consisting of wine, butter, and tomato sauce. It did much more to enhance the veal flavor than it did to overpower it; making it really a somewhat light dish. Lori's chicken alfredo was, according to her, the best chicken fettuccine alfredo she had ever had. Now that statement is normally the kind of statement I make so I was really impressed when she said it. She let me sample a couple of bites from her huge plate and the sauce was obviously made from scratch; rich and creamy and quite decadent. Lori was able to finish about half of her plate. I was really not horribly hungry but mysteriously all the veal on my plate vanished, along with the remainder of the sauce with the help of some bread.
Our friendly waitress offered, but both of us were way to full to order dessert, deciding instead on a to go container for Lori's food.
This authentic Italian eatery was an extremely pleasant surprise tucked away in downtown McKinney and both my wife and I highly recommend this restaurant.
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