Kara Mia

publication date: May 22, 2008

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author/source: Tim Altork And John Breech / STAFF

Note: Kara Mia has a homemade tomato sauce similar to a spaghetti or pasta sauce that is referred to as Sunday gravy. It’s not gravy in the Southern sense of the word. So when we use the term Sunday gravy, we are not referring to the three-week old gravy in John’s refrigerator that he drinks for breakfast twice a week. This Sunday gravy is mild, tasty, made from scratch daily and suitable for all ages.

First Impressions
John: When I walked in to Kara Mia, the first person to greet me was Renee, who also happens to be the owner’s mom/wife (If that’s confusing, it should be. She is the wife of co-owner Bob Weiss and the mom of the other co-owner Jeff Weiss). The last time I was greeted by someone’s mom before dinner was when I was in sixth grade. I found it to be very homey and equally comforting. Not only did Renee greet us, but she also sat us. This woman did everything.

As for the restaurant, every table at Kara Mia has a paper tablecloth and all tables are equipped with crayons. The crayons are a good idea if you have Tim or anyone under eight eating with you. (This is no joke. Not only would Tim not put the crayons down, he wouldn’t share them either.)

Our server Mary brought us some complimentary garlic bread to start off with. My mom always said, “If you can’t say something nice… then write it down and try and sound nice.” So I’ll say this; the bread was a little hard, but it definitely had some flavor thanks to the real garlic clove pieces interspersed throughout the loaf.

Tim: Any time there are crayons and a paper tablecloth at a restaurant, I find it impossible to restrain my fourth-grade art skills. Let’s just say that by the end of the meal, there was a whole family of stick people who were catching everything that fell off my plate.

There is a definite family atmosphere at Kara Mia. The Weiss family was very present on the floor, not just with us, but with all of the patrons.

Chocolate Crunch Cake

But the shopping center locale detracts from that family feel. The interior was just a little too sterile and in that regard it felt more like a chain than a family place.

And I liked the garlic bread. Any time you can see chunks of actual garlic on anything, then you’ve got a good something.

John: B+ (mainly for momma Weiss and Mary)
Tim: B

Appetizers
John: Mary recommended we go with Chef Jeff Wiess’ own invention, the Pizza Mia rolls. Mary described them as “egg rolls on steroids.” That was definitely an understatement; these egg rolls were on steroids, human growth hormone and anything else you might find in Barry Bonds’ medicine cabinet.

The rolls were huge, and they were as tasty as they were big. The platter came with three rolls and each of them was filled with different pizza-topping-type ingredients.

To go with our rolls, we also ordered some fried calamari. Tim hates calamari. I don’t know if he has some bitter repressed calamari-related memory from his childhood, but he won’t eat it, so you’ll have to take my word for how it tastes.

It was a little bit tastier than calamari I have had in the past, and it wasn’t rubbery. Plus when dipped in the Sunday gravy, it became so addictive, that Tim had to have an impromptu intervention with me so I would stop eating it.

Tim: The Pizza Mia rolls were an obvious hit. It was at this point in the meal that our plans to pace ourselves through the meal and not eat too much at the beginning went completely in the tank. Fortunately for me, Breech ordered the squid. So I had plenty of room for more pizza rolls.

John: A
Tim: B

Entrees
John: We ordered three items; shrimp fra diavlo, chicken stromboli and a meatball hero. The portions were ridiculously huge. For instance, for the next season of NBC’s “The Biggest Loser,” they could just keep a camera rolling at Kara Mia for a few months and cast anyone that finishes their whole meal.

The meatball hero may have been the tastiest Italian dish I have ever had, however, since Tim finished his portion, I’ll let him describe it in detail (remember, we split the dish, so he’s not a “Biggest Loser” contestant just yet). The shrimp fra diavlo was just your basic pasta with some shrimp and a spicier version of the Sunday gravy. It’s something I could probably make at home if I wasn’t a cooking indigent, but it was tasty nonetheless.

Tim: The meatball hero was served open-faced. It was kind of like a Stauffer’s pizza, only it didn’t sear a hole in the roof of my mouth when I took a bite, and it didn’t taste like cardboard.

It had plenty of cheese, sliced meatballs and Sunday gravy and it was served on a crispy slice of Ciabatta bread. I had a hard time putting it down.

And half of the thing is plenty for one person with a normal-sized appetite because it comes with garlic bread and a salad. At $9, it’s ideal for an inexpensive meal for two.

We also had a stromboli. I lobbied for this partly because I had just watched a show on the Food Network featuring strombolis, and I hadn’t been able to get the cheesy, saucy image out of my head.

Unfortunately, the real thing didn’t live up to that image. The sauce and the bread overwhelmed the dish, making it difficult to distinguish the flavor of the ingredients. We had the Salerno stromboli, which was anchored by chunks of grilled chicken breast. Chicken is always something that sounds good in a pizza-type setting, but rarely works, in my experience. This case was no different.

Tim: B (the meatball hero buoyed this grade above the C-line)
John: B

Dessert
John: We had two slices of cake for dessert: a slice of the mochachino cheesecake and a slice of the chocolate crunch cake. How brilliant is the chocolate crunch cake you ask? Let me put it like this. I hate changing diapers. If someone said, “John, change 12 diapers and you can have a slice of chocolate crunch cake,” I would change 60 of them for one and a half pieces of this chocolate bliss.

The frosting tastes like a liquid malted milk ball, which is a lot tastier then it might sound.

As for the cheesecake, restaurants are trying to do too much with cheesecake these days. Remember when it was just cheese and cake? Those were simpler times. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. Next time I’m there, I’ll skip the mochachino cheesecake and get double the chocolate crunch.

Tim: If there’s a way to eat these multi-flavored cheesecakes and enjoy them, I haven’t found it. It’s not that it tastes bad, there’s just too much going on. Cheesecake has been mistakenly identified as a medium for a bunch of other flavors, and I think it works best as a dessert unto itself. Cheesecake is best served plain on a graham cracker crust or with a little bit of fruit preserves. Other than that, it just doesn’t work for me.

However, I will echo Breech’s assessment of the chocolate crunch cake. It’s very telling that after we chowed down on most of the giant portions of the other dishes, we couldn’t stop putting our fork into the crunch cake for one more bite.

John: B+
Tim: B

Overall
Kara Mia has some signature items like the pizza rolls and the Sunday gravy that could really catch on. And they are set up to allow families with young children to come in and feel comfortable, a savvy move given their location and potential clientele.

This is a stick-to-the-basics type of place. We went in and tried to get some of the more diverse items on the menu, with mixed results. But you can rarely go wrong with things like lasagna, chicken parmesan and fettuccini alfredo, and they also have a variety of pizzas.

Plus you’ll get that personal touch from the Weiss family that you just won’t get at one of the popular Italian chains.

Tim’s Overall Grade: B -
John’s Overall Greade: B+