Dinner with Friends Part 2 (Rosa Bianca Trattoria)

Rosa Bianca Trattoria is an Italian restaurant BYOB in the heart of Yardley, right near where I used to work. After hearing some reviews from coworkers, we decided to make reservations for Friday, and have a belated Valentine's double date. (That sounded good in my head.)

 (Photo take from Rosa Bianca website)

We picked up Tree and Jeff and they brought a nice bottle of wine to share, (except for me of course!) and headed over to Yardley. The restaurant was in an old home, so the rooms of the house were filled with little cozy tables. Since it was Friday, none of us were eating meat, but we looked at the dinner menu online and it looked like there were some choices for seafood, and we assumed they would have some specials as well. My coworker Mary suggested for an appetizer the Mozzarella in Carozza, which was their home-made mozzarella cheese, sandwich in crusty Italian bread and lightly fried, coupled with pomodoro sauce and basil pesto. We also ordered the fried calamari as an appetizer.

These both were amazingly delish! The Mozzarella in Carozza was wonderful- you could definitely tell the cheese was home-made, and the play of the textures with the gooey mozzarella and crunchy fried bread were just amazing. The pesto and pomodoro enhanced the flavors. The fried calamari was also really good, but in my eyes, you can't ever go wrong with fried calamari!

We were excited to hear the specials, and 3 of us picked the Spaghetti with pomodoro sauce, with lump crab meat and shrimp. Andrew ordered the wild striped bass with sauteed escarole and white beans with a roasted tomato pesto. When our entrees arrived, I expected something a bit different. It looked like they had made a large vat of the pasta with crab and shrimp, and just shoveled it our onto our plates! The lump crab meat was all broken into shreds and there were shrimp tails (just tails) floating around, which means it was just being stirred and plopped on to plates. I was expecting this bed of pasta with mindfully placed shrimp and crab meat and a beautiful presentation. Everyone agreed that all their entrees were just OK, and it was a bit disappointing after such a great start. Tree head heard good things about the Tiramisu, so Jeff ordered that. Tree ordered the cheese cake, and Andrew and I ordered the cheese cake (to go) and canollis. All the desserts were handmade, so we had high hopes! The cheese cake was really light and delicious. Jeff had no complaints about the Tiramisu, and the canolli cream was different than what I have ever tasted in the past. I really wasn't fond of it at all. I think if you want to have some appetizers and desserts with some friends, it would be a great place to go, but for a dinner that was $200 (not including alcohol!) there are definitely better Italian restaurants to eat! That is probably what we would have paid to eat at LaStalla or Florentino's. (Both in Newtown.)

The company of course was amazing, and the wait staff was very attentive, funny and friendly. We spotted The Vault Brewing Company in Yardley on our way to dinner, and we have decided to make that our next dinner date!