Ozzie's Corner Italian

Last Friday my friend and I went to Ozzie's in Fairfax Corner. I know what you are thinking, really April- a Great American Restaurant in FFX Corner on a Friday night-have you lost your mind??. For those of you who are not from the area FFX Corner is a nightmare on the weekends but luckily Ozzie's does call ahead (571-321-8000) so you can put your name on the wait list-awesome. When I called there was about a 45 minute wait but by the time we arrived we were seated with in 5 minutes, perfect.

We both ordered water which they serve in carafes making it nice you don't have to wait for your water to be refilled.

They brought us out some bread. For those of you who have never had bread from a Great American Restaurant, you are really missing out. Those round breadballs are amazing.

 

For an appetizer, we decided upon the Fontina Focaccia Bruschetta grape tomatoes, cherry mozzarella & balsamic $9 on recommendation of our waiter (we were trying to decide between 3 things and he said this hands down). You could describe this as a fancy grilled cheese sandwich almost. It was good, the balsamic vinegar on it was amazing however I am not a fan of bruchetta served this way so I personally would not order this again. I would have also liked to see more then 3 balls of mozzarella on this.

We both ordered side salads to go with out meal. I ordered the Mixed Field Greens

field lettuces, grape tomatoes, figs, pine nuts, focaccia croutons & white balsamic vinaigrette $6 (they also give you the option to add cheese for $1/$2 more). This was a delicious salad, white balsamic vinaigrette could not have been more perfect/delicious. 

Alissa ordered the Caesar Salad romaine hearts, Kalamata olives, focaccia croutons, capers and Parmigiano-Reggiano $6. She enjoyed her salad, but we both agreed it had a very heavy bite of garlic to it so if you are not a hardcore garlic lover it would be too much for you. 

I ordered the Crazy Lasagna pappardelle, tomatoes, ricotta, wild boar Bolognese, Provolone & a couple meatballs $17. I loved this "crazy" interpretation of the lasagna. Everything about this dish was awesome, including the meatballs. I ended up taking half of this home and eating it for breakfast the next morning...yum :)

Alissa ordered the Rigatoni with Shrimp, Chicken & Sausage spicy Amatriciana tomato cream & mushrooms $17. Sadly this dish was not up to par. It was not bad, but it was definitely not what was described in the menu. She let me try a bite so I grabbed a forkful of the pasta with a piece of sausage and chicken-it turns out I grabbed the one piece of sausage that was on her dish :( So there was only one piece of sausage on her dish and the sauce was not spicy at all. Not a winning dish at all. She did comment that the shrimp in the dish was cooked perfectly. 

For dessert we ordered the Tiramisu Ho Ho $7. Amazing. I have no complaints about this dish whatsoever-only wish I had more room in my stomach for this. If you have room for dessert you must get this (plan ahead and take part of your meal home so you do have room!). It is pretty big (bigger then the picture makes it look) so I would suggest sharing it with 1-2 other people, we were not able to finish it and we both pushed ourselves to the limit.

Overall the food was pretty good, but the service was slacking up until the end. One of my biggest pet peeves happened. As you can see in the photo below they overload us with food instead of waiting for us to finish each course. As you can see all the plates from our meal were there...empty bread basket, empty appetizer plate, salad plates, dinner plates. We got our meals when we were about half way through with our salads-I am a pretty fast eater so it's not like we were taking our time there. Luckily my meal with still really hot but Alissa's was pretty much room temperature.

At the end of the meal Alissa recognized one of the servers to be her old friend so the dessert we ordered ended up being on the house. Before they had their reunion/recognition of each other, he served the last part of our meal and things were a lot more prompt and clean (I am not just saying that because of the dessert-there were a good 10 minutes of them not acknowledging each other before any of this happened).

Anyways, while service was ehh and some of the items were not up to par this was still a good night out, keeping pretty much up to the standards that the Great American Restaurants boast. My only suggestion is to make sure you call ahead and put your name on the wait list or don't go on a friday night (where you will park ridiculously far away) and stay away from the rigatoni!

11880 Grand Commons Ave
Fairfax, VA
571-321-8000