Como's Italian Restaurant — Restaurant in El Paso

Having grown-up in El Paso, I have distant memories of my mother having taken me to the Eastside location back in the 90s. I remember as a kid, absolutely just adoring this place. Fast forward several lifetimes, and I rediscovered it when my wife and I were living on the west side around ‘05ish. Have you ever had something hit your taste buds that instantly activates warm fuzzy memories in your head? Weird the way the brain is wired sometimes. But yeah, it instantly took me back to how much I loved it. Everything instantly tasted familiar. The sauce, the al dente, perfect-bite of the homemade pasta, the unique flavor of the meat in the ravioli, the incredibly awesome homemade bread that almost has a slight sweet aspect intermingling with the salty butter and garlic & Given a slight blackened crust around the edges. Like it was broiled for a bit. And then dipping said incredible homemade bread into what is quite possibly THE best marinara I have ever tasted in my life. And I’ve been to Italy. I learned much later, that something I suspected for a long time was actually rooted in reality. I always thought the sauce from Capettos tasted very similar to the sauce from Comos. Well it turns out that the same large family, at least different portions of the same large family owned both restaurants! IKR?! And the sauce, marinara & meat sauce, are variations of the same recipe. Mind blown. I guess you have to be an EP foodie of long-standing to understand.

Well we ate there on a very regular basis, until such is often the case at regular intervals through all of our journeys..Life happened. To varying degrees. Fast forward as my better half & I find ourselves living on the east side for several years now, having long since forgotten Comos. Getting our Italian kicks from Trattoria on the high end, and gasp Olive Garden in a pinch. And of course, getting our pizza fix from Grimaldi‘s & Ardovinos. I think distinction should be made, that I mean when we`really’ feel like pizza, we would eat at those two places. But clearly, being an El Pasoan, you simply have to have your steady supply of Peter Piper for just plain scarfing occasions. Well we found ourselves running some errands & just happen to be on the west side at dinner time, with nothing pressing to do or bring us back to the east. And then we passed by a restaurant neither one of us had thought about in probs 7 or 8 years. The planets had aligned, the galaxy had spoken so we obliged the cosmic balance & decided to revisit. OMG.. tastebud activated memory flashback episode 2 much? Absolutely nothing had changed. Everything was just as incredible as I remember from those two previous points in my life. The sauce tasted exactly the same and had that divine and indescribable flavor of bold, sweet, tangy and just the absolute perfect balance of spices. And the ravioli. Just as incredible and delicious as I remember it was. Literally nothing had changed. Even the menu was the same. The decor was the same. This almost.. 80s deep dark dimly lit Italian restaurant like in the basement of a building. No windows, with just the lights from the candles & dim lamps. They even had this same deep, dark vinyl table cloths on all the tables. Serious old world vibe. So I guess depending on what you may dig in your restaurant decor, your mileage may vary in your impressions. But the food. My God the food was every bit as incredible & beyond delicious as I remember. Totally even occurred to me after I completely polished off everything, to actually lick my plate. Absolutely not joking. I was kidding with the waitress, who evidently has been working there for 17 years, that I would kill for the sauce recipe. She literally shot me this look, and then proceeded to tell me there’s absolutely no way in hell that she would ever do so. That other customers had seriously asked her for years & that she would never think about it. Ok, was kinda just joking, but that really just cemented how special this place is. Go there now! And have them put a stripe of cream sauce on top of...

The Italian restaurant is visible from the road and has it's own parking lot. From the inside the theme: a semi-romantic dinner: dim lighting, cloth table covering and cloth napkins. Three possible rooms/areas to seat in, comfortable seating with exception of the large screen TV over one table, which is okay if you like to sit at the very front of a movie theatre too. Food ordered: Syrian salad, hamburger pizza, and Mexican spaghetti My impression, when look at a standard Italian menu and see variations you want to try the odd choice.... thinking maybe that what make this place different from other Italian eateries, however, my Syrian salad was a typical large cuts of lettuce, small triangular carrot pieces, and tomato quarters, drowned in Oil/vinegar. This was not a small appetizer salad you get before a meal, I sent my kids for small plates so I could share with them, it took two requests because even though the staff saw that I had two kids sitting with me, they gave us one plate at a time. After diving the salad, I noticed a very large amount of oil/vinegar mixture still on my plate, my salad fork dripped every time I move salad towards my mouth... I didn't finish my portion, but I ate enough of it not to clue my kids into thinking how badly I didn't want THIS salad. My waiter came by to pick up my plate, after noticing that I wasn't eating from it anymore, I could audible hear him gasp, as he spill a large oily puddle onto the table cloth in front of me but yet didn't appologize or even try to clean it up or offer additional napkins. My kids not only urged me to try to clean up the large oil bubble with my cloth napkin (which is impossible to do if you have ever tried with a rag of any kind) but my kids tease me on how messy of my side of the table was compared to theirs. I tried to take a before picture of my salad before I ate any of it, but the dressing had such a gleam, I felt like I was taking a picture of mirror with the camera flash whiting out the image, the dim room lighting kept turning on my auto-flash mode on my cell phone which made it worse. On to the Mexican spaghetti, it looked like the type of pre-mixed all-in-one pasta dish that you'd expect from a fundraiser at school (plus jar pickled jalapeno slices). My pasta dish came with buttered bread like the type you get when you eat menudo. Nothing really unique, I guess I'll stick the classics. The hamburger pizza was good in a few ways, but not too fancy either, pizza with minimally seasoned ground beef ( which actually was burnt or extra toasted on side... I really like my steaks well done, so this was a win for me). I'll upload a picture of a couple slices later, funny how the pizza wasn't greasy enough to have the same glare problem my salad did. Most of the staff seemed

Got recommended this by a friend in the area. Walked in, the decor wasn't too bad, but was seated at a table with a wrinkly table cloth where someone had strategically hidden a large stain under the paper doily my silverware was on. A child was running around, screaming, and playing with the balloons that someone brought for a separate party on the other end of the restaurant. The staff were polite, but I couldn't give a compliment on my server since I had no idea who it was as I had a different person come to my table for seating, the menu, my water, my order, my wine, and my food. The food was upsettingly sweet. I had fettucine Alfredo with no pepper, parsley, salt, or flavor aside from sweet, but lots of grease. Even the garlic bread, if you want to call it that, was extraordinarily sweet, also no seasoning, just a very faint hint of garlic on what was practically half toasted pastry. After I finished my meal, the man who brought over my wine bussed the table and got really uncomfortable when I told him that the food was kind of alright after he asked. I was hungry and no one came by while I ate to ask me about it, and I'm not one to hunt down someone to complain to or try to eat a whole dish and throw a fit saying I hated it wanting a refund or something stupid like that. I'm not going to say I thought it was great though. After he took everything except my wine and water glass, I sat at the table about 15-20 minutes waiting for someone to stop by with the check. It got to the point that I got tired of waiting so i just got up and went to the register instead just so I could get out of there. Really big let down, and absolutely way too pricey for the...