Little Chicagos — Restaurant in Muncie

Finally - after many years, muncie once again has a small homey AUTHENTIC Italian restaurant! My husband and I went there this last sat for a special dinner out without the kids. Had the Fried mozzarella as a appetizer, which I ate as slowly as I could make myself- trying to figure out, as a fellow chef - how they make it, and what makes it taste so incredible! Major WOW on that dish! For dinner, my husband had his usual Chicken Marsala - which he tries at every Italian restaurant we go to - he says this one is the very best as of yet! I had the Shrimp Scampi - very delicious, and boy were those shrimp huge and flavorful! All dishes we had had great visual appeal as well - colors balanced well, which can make a difference! The waiter was very personable - there enough to make sure you had all you needed, without being obnoxious and interfering in our date, which was very nice! The atmosphere was simple, but very tasteful, not too many pictures on the wall, which sometimes Italian restaurants have a tendency to do. There aren't many tables, and they filled up fast, so get there as early as you can! There aren't many dishes on the menu, but that means more in a small place like that - fewer dishes means they really know how to make what they have, and excel in it! I love that it isn't some big corporate place - like OG - that I can't even eat, it's so plain! This is obviously a small family place, with high quality food that Muncie needs! Definitely go there! And sorry I didn't take the photos before they were half eaten - it smelled and looked so good, we dove in before I thought...

First off, let me say that our service was great. Brandon was attentive and on top of everything all evening. He did a great job making sure we were never out of water or tea...when they still had tea. So Brandon was awesome. The food was fine. We started with a house salad that was absolutely swimming in dressing. The top of it was fine and the ingredients were OK, but the bottom of the salad was inedible. It was just wet. I had a chicken parm. Overall, it was good. The noodles were cooked well, and the chicken was tasty. The wife had shrimp scampi and again, it was drowning in garlic butter. There was a puddle in the plate and it overwhelmed the pasta. The terimisu was OK. Not amazing. Not terrible. And as mentioned above, they ran out of tea. While our server did offer a free replacement beverage, I don't get how you run out of both teas at dinner time. The bill was 85 after tip. I don't mind paying a little extra for a good meal. We do it all of the time. But for close to 90, there are better options in town.

Maybe go for lunch and see what you think ? I might go back for dinner to try something else because my server was very good. But I can't imagine...

Portion sizes were VERY small for the cost and not having sides included. I got fettuccine and paid $5 extra for chicken making my plate around $24. Oddly it had a weird perfume after taste (hard to explain but I think it was a seasoning on the blackened chicken). Side salads do not come with pasta so that was an extra $7 which was my favorite part of the meal (after taking all the olives off) along with the breadsticks and we paid extra to try the cream cheese dip, I preferred just the marinara though. So with the very small side salad and drink my meal total was around $35. Soda is canned and gets poured into the glasses so we werent sure if refills were free or not. Spouse got a small personal 4 piece pizza that I believe was $17 but was not impressed and it came out burnt with little cheese/toppings on it. Child got the spaghetti and loved it and it was reasonably priced at around $6 and had more pasta than my adult meal. Long story short... we'll try it again and order something different but weren't impressed this first go-around for a meal that was...