Mamma Mia’s
People come from all over the world to see Plymouth history and eat New England seafood, but one of my favorite places in the area is a family red sauce style of restaurant. The name really says it all, Mamma Mia's.
This is a two story restaurant with big windows and a deck you cannot beat the view of Plymouth harbor and even a replica of the Mayflower.
I love drinking beer and eating muscles on the deck, but let's go check out the inside.
This is a casual, comfortable restaurant with a bar upstairs and downstairs. In other words, my kind of spot.
“It is a family owned and operated restaurant. And…You don't see as much of it today, you know, as you'd like to probably. But we have a large family and… we all work here…Being with your family all the time can have its downfalls, but 90% of the time…it's phenomenal.”
Tony and Sam Viscarello are cousins, and they're second generation of this family that owns a bunch of Mamma Mia's on the South Shore.
“We treat our customers like you walk into our living room, and that's the basis for our business, and then just good food and good service…. And we have repeat customers for generations.”
For 50 years the signature item at Mamma Mia's has been the pizza. They roll the dough, they toss the dough, they do it right.
“I really think it's simple. It's the ingredients. We make our dough fresh every day. We source the best ingredients we can find, and we make it all by hand each and every day. So we use whole milk, mozzarella cheese. You know, it's just really the best product that you can source, and that's what we use.”
You gotta try the house special pie for vegetables, it has mushrooms, onions and peppers.
For meats, it has linguica, pepperoni, meatballs and sausage. That is a lot of flavor to put on one pizza.
“Everything we got on that pizza board goes on that pizza. You just have to come in and try it.”
Mamma Mia’s Margherita pizza is another fan favorite. This is a lighter-style pizza, that means no traditional red sauce. Instead, it has fresh sliced tomatoes and basil, it’s drizzled with olive oil, topped with creamy Buffalo Mozzarella and then baked to a golden crisp.
Mamma Mia, that’s good pizza!
“Maybe you can finish a Margherita pizza by yourself, but definitely not the house special.”
Look at them making this pasta fresh. This is old school artisan methodology, the true Italian experience. This is the lasagna your grandmother used to make, if she was a really good Italian cook. It has that homemade pasta, three types of cheese, meatball and that red sauce. This is the real, traditional Italian type flavor.
“All the cheeses are layered perfectly, from the ricotta to the mozzarella to the parmesan, and then we top with a traditional sauce, and we just bake it to perfection.
I consider myself somewhat of a prince of parm. I get it all the time, and yet I'm never sure which one to get. The Parmesan trio has solved my food prayers, because I can get all three in once it has chicken, eggplant and veal over fettuccine and that traditional red sauce.
I’m going to try to get all three layers in one bite, but I'm a professional, so please don't try this at home.
“You have the chicken, the veal, the eggplant layered with the cheese and it sits over a bed of homemade noodle and it’s just a wonderful dish.”
I love to order mussels. It's kind of like ordering peel and eat shrimp. Here you can get mussels two different ways, a spicy fra diavolo with that red sauce, or a scampi so it's buttery and garlicky. Either way, you're going to want to ask for extra bread so you can soak up all that delicious sauce.
“The fra diavolo here is amazing. You really need to come in and try it. It's fantastic.”
After you eat, you’ll probably be logie from all the pasta, and you'll probably be in a trance from watching the boats come in and out of Plymouth harbor. So I recommend wrapping up your meal with a traditional slice of tiramisu.
“After you ate your large house special, you want to have a nice piece of tiramisu... My favorite with a tiramisu is… just put a little bit of Sambuca on it and let it just come down, and it'll melt it down right over the tiramisu. I absolutely love it.”
I think a lot of us remember a school field trip to Plymouth Rock, which was very disappointing, because you realize the rock is just the size of an oversized meatball, but with great Italian food and this incredible view, I don't think you'll be disappointed at Mamma Mia's.
“It's just, it's an experience. I think when you come in the door, you can feel it… Our employees are like family, our food is just, you know, phenomenal. It's homemade. It's just it's hard to beat. So when you have that type of recipe, great people, great food, great friends, good wine, it's just tough to beat. “
