Annie's: average Italian food

Annie's: average Italian food

I wanted to try Annie's after their outstanding performance in the 2010 Reader Restaurant Awards.

Positives:

• Friendly, courteous staff
• Clean seating area, clean men's room — no gigantic puddles of urine to wade step over — these are all good signs
• Price is on par with the quality they deliver
• Parmesan eggplant was great
• Plenty of freshly grated cheese left on the table — if you're on a budget, you can bring a zip-lock bag and stock up
• Freshly ground pepper provided by the waiter without having to ask
• Tiramisu, while not authentic, was very tasty, and a lot better than the stuff they have at Weiduomei

Negatives:

• Pepperoni pizza was below average. They used plastic, melamine-milk-powder-tasting cheese, bland dough and crust — it was just boring. My high school cafeteria had better pizza. The Tree and Pyro are better executed and about the same price.
• Cesar salad was sloppy and watery. A handful of hard bacon bits were thrown in the bottom.

Clientele:

• When I visited, during the busy dinner period, the restaurant was filled with 90% waidiren, talking loudly in waidihua, with waidi kids running around
• The remaining 10% were Westerners, mostly Americans

I'd recommend Annie's to you if fall into one of these categories:

• You have rambunctious kids that aren't finicky about the quality of cheese on their pizza
• You are taking some countryside folk to their first ever Western Restaurant
• You consider Olive Garden and Red Lobster to be excellent restaurants (in which case, you'll consider Annie's to be very good)