Sergi's

Officially, it is Sergi's Italian Restaurant Pizzeria & Banquet Hall. It has been around in the exact same location at 10 Market Street since my college days in the mid 80's (originally established in the 60's I believe), in historic downtown Potsdam, NY. I swear I had taken a picture of its storefront the previous fall with my camera that is now lost, but this one of my kids in our yard with the paper placemat map of Italy from our visit will have to do (taken with new cheapo camera). That's Julie, of the Julie/Mom Project, on the left. I remembered I had my new camera with me after we already walked home. It is fun to look at the picture now, in the bleak of winter and remember fondly the fall weather that I love so much.

We actually went here for the Project on October 16, 2011 and I have just been too darn lazy to write it up yet. This is a "no rules" blog and that's just the way it goes. We originally started it to do restaurants listed in the North Country This Week's Spring Restaurant Guide, but since they just published a similar Fall Restaurant Guide, we'll just slide on into that. I think the Fall Guide has added some new places, but Sergi's is in both. The nearby town of Canton, NY also has a Sergi's.

I decided to take the girls out before I had to leave for out-of-state work and Sergi's was their choice. They have eaten here before and knew exactly what they wanted. I was feeling a bit under the weather and not really so hungry. I love their pizza, but haven't really tried much else. There are two sides to the restaurant... the banquet hall side, with some fancy chandeliers and nicer furniture (as I recall) and the diner style side that we sat in, with informal booth seating in two rows down the length of the skinny room to the kitchen. Beer and wine is served, though I was having none of that this day.

The girls both ordered the stuffed shells which comes with bread and a house salad, MJ's with no dressing and Julie's with ranch. MJ got her usual root beer and Julie a Diet Coke, not that the "diet" part of her beverage was going to save her much in the calorie total with this meal! I ordered water to drink and appetizers, bruschetta and the sampler platter which consisted of breaded, fried zucchini, mushrooms, mozzarella sticks and buffalo style chicken wings. All these appetizers were pretty standard and there truly is not much one can do to improve on such basics. But the bruschetta was average and has potential for improvement. It was just a mix of olive-oil seasoned chopped tomatoes, red onion, grated parmesan and garlic on toasted bread. The dried basil sprinkling was not very prominent, but the bread itself is home-made and the strongest part of this item. Julie enjoyed it, but was able to discern the considerable difference in quality with the bruschetta she made herself at home.

MJ picked through her salad, removing the tomato wedges and the cucumber. She doesn't like fresh tomatoes, but she loves cucumber. She said that the cucumber "tasted funny" the last time she ate them here. I ate them and they tasted fine. She ate the large, thin slices of carrot as well as the black olives and the bulk of the salad which was chopped head lettuce. She picked out the sparse gourmet greens including spinach and red lettuce, which I thought she liked. Strange kid. Julie picked out her tomato wedges and I ate them. She likes tomato, but I think is spoiled by the home garden ones we had from recent harvest.

Julie shared the appetizers with me and MJ ate one mozzarella stick, the only item palatable to her. Julie still needs to learn how to eat chicken wings like a New Yorker. She leaves too much meat on them. Usually they serve one wing each of the various spicy grades in the sampler platter, but I got them all mild so Julie wouldn't get surprised. She'll work up in the heat scale as she grows, I'm sure. She already does pretty well with spiciness. Julie loves mushrooms and had several of these breaded ones, but didn't venture into the fried zucchini. I bat clean-up and finished her salad as well as all remains of the appetizers. I wasn't very hungry to begin with and I was stuffed now.

Speaking of stuffed, the stuffed shells looked delicious in their boat dish filled with sauce and cheese baked to bubbling and slightly browned. The portion was quite large of such rich food and although MJ claimed to have eaten one of the stuffed shells, I couldn't tell that she had eaten any. Perhaps just not in a growth spirt at this time, since it wasn't like she had filled herself on appetizers. Julie, who had eaten appetizers, but purposely limited them to keep room for her main course, ate noticably more of the shells. Of course, she is stuck in growth spirt mode! All good. They leftover quite nicely and there was no waste.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention Sergi's pizza rolls. Though this is not intended to be a food critic blog, I can't help myself. Sergi's makes their pizza rolls in the deep frier. They have a huge amount of fried dough at their conically tapered ends which results in a very tiny pocket for the filling. The last one I had (brought to me take-out by my husband) was very skimpy on the pepperoni and sauce filling and struck me like a fried dough sledgehammer. I love fried dough, I just wish they could get less of that and more filling. Love you, though, Sergi's! You make really good pizza and your business space is comfortable and friendly.