Food review blog from San Francisco.

Restaurant: Mondo Caffe (San Francisco)
Food description: Pasta tubes filled with ricotta cheese topped with mozarella and marinara sauce
Food rating: 6.5 out of 10
Times ordered: 1

I always order the same old panini sandwiches at Mondo Caffe (the bresaola is my fave), but today I was feeling experimental and noticed a little sign with "Manicotti" scribbled on it. Since it's an Italian cafe I figured they might be able to hold their own in terms of pasta. Well overall, the manicotti was just about as good as you can get for a busy lunch spot: nothing amazing, but it beats a sandwich any day. If you look at the photo, you notice that none of the pasta was left exposed for the oven to dry out--something I always watch out for in pasta. Who wants to break their teeth on burnt chewy pasta, you know? Anyway, the pasta ended up being a little overcooked and soft, but still tasted ok, especially with all that cheesy ricotta goodness. It was hearty and rich and just the right portion size. My only gripe was the canned tomato flavor in the sauce. Using canned tomatoes is fine as long as you add enough other stuff to make it work, which was not the case for this dish. This is the second time this week I've complained about this...sigh. If you factor out the tomatoes, there was nothing glaringly wrong with the manicotti, and I definitely enjoyed it more than the ole sandwich-4-lunch routine, so I can see myself ordering this again.