Definitely not Carnival Food

Every year Astoria has a carnival over a weekend in June. Sometimes it’s 2 weekends. Either way, it doesn’t stick around too long, so last year was the first year I even checked it out. It was a mob scene last year and we ended up eating elsewhere. This year was…. no different.

I heard about it earlier this time however so we went to take a look on Friday, when it was a little less busy and took Tyson with us as well. It was still pretty crowded, mostly for all of the rides. Since I’m headed to Disneyworld soon and plus we had a dog with us, I had no interest in that. They really didn’t have much food other than the typical carnival fare (fair?), which usually is overpriced and mediocre. So instead, we looked for somewhere with outdoor seating and found Palermo right down the street.

We shared a bunch of dishes, starting with at chicken caesar salad. (Gotta have some greens, right?)

It was a generous portion of chicken, but adding it cost almost the same as the dishe itself. I love croutons though and they had a generous amount there as well. Even though it looks like the only cheese is those larger squares, there was also some shaved parmesan in the salad as well. It was nicely dressed, so a solid start to the meal.

Next, we had some pizza.

We built our own with sausage and roasted red peppers. The dough was light and fluffy and it still had a really nice crisp all the way around - no soggy bottoms here. And with some fresh basil on top too.

Lastly, we had some pasta.

We had the Rigatoni Con Le Salsicce, which was sausages and a whole bunch of veggies, including spinach and broccoli. They were generous with all toppings as seen here. All the veggies were cooked down properly without too much of a crunch and cooked in a nice oil and garlic, so very flavorful. I thought it might be overkill to have sausage on the pizza and sausage in the pasta, but they had much larger chunks in the pasta while it was finer pieces in the pizza. Even Tyson got to enjoy a piece that fell to the floor and he enjoyed it immensely.

It was nice to find a gem like this in the neighborhood with some very solid food. They were pretty busy the entire time we were there but not too jam packed. I would definitely come back.