Raso’s
Everybody knows the restaurant business is tough. The places that seem to succeed are the neighborhood restaurants that serve generous portions at an affordable price. And this is exactly that kind of place. We are on mystic Ave in Medford, Massachusetts, at a place named Raso’s. And for two decades, they have been packed with regulars.
Raso’s is a distinct kind of restaurant you find up here north of Boston. It's part Italian, part American, part pizza, and just a great place to chow down and feed your family at an affordable price. Owner Richie Raso opened this place 20 years ago, and he's a very familiar face around here, not only because he's always at the restaurant, but for years, he was also a police officer in town. These days, the only crime you'll find in this place is not finishing your plate.
The menu is like an all star lineup of a lot of your favorite Italian and American foods. You have pizzas, steaks, pastas. Starting out with appetizers, of course, they have some delicious home style meatballs that are made fresh every single day. Believe it or not, the chicken tenders are one of the most popular appetizers here. The calamari is super fresh, nicely fried, super light and crispy. And the signature appetizer is the eggplant rollatini, very tender, blanketed in cheese, great homemade marinara sauce. This thing just soothes and comforts you like a warm blanket.
The number one reason why I come to Raso’s is the pizza. Here's one of the most popular: the chicken parmesan pizza. So you get that perfectly seasoned crispy chicken, the sweetness of the sauce, the gooeyness of the cheese, and that perfect crust around the outside. They also make an amazing actual chicken parm, but we'll get to that in a minute.
The number one pizza I gotta recommend at Raso’s is definitely the shrimp scampi. Yes, that's right, shrimp scampi on a pizza. Don't knock it till you try it. It's crispy, it's cheesy, it's garlicky. The shrimp just pops in your mouth. I love it.
Raso’s is known primarily for their Italian food and their pizza, but their steaks should not be ignored. Just check out this sirloin steak - simply seasoned with just some salt and some black pepper. Serve it up with some creamy mashed potatoes and some nice grilled asparagus. To boost the flavor even more, you can throw a little demi glaze over the top. That is a serious steak, my friends.
This is one of my all time favorite classic Italian American comfort food dishes: the pork chops with vinegar peppers. This is a massive, thick cut bone in pork chop. It's served over some crispy, roasted potatoes, and then the vinegar peppers thatreally takes the flavor over the top. It's just a magical combination of the savory pork, the earthy potatoes, the tangy vinegar, peppers. That dish cannot be improved. That is awesome.
Okay, all you pasta lovers, here are the must try pasta dishes, starting out with the Mafalda Bolognese. Everybody loves a good bolognese sauce, and they make a great one here at Raso’s, all slow simmered together for a long time, so you get that real depth of flavor. Mafalda is basically leftover pasta. If you're making fresh ravioli, when you cut it to make them uniform, you end up with a little ribbon of pasta at the end. That's what Mafalda is. So this is a long, thick, wavy kind of pasta that really envelops the sauce into every single bite. It's a perfect plate of pasta.
Of course, Chicken Parmesan is very popular here, and they do a regular chicken parmesan. But you know what's even better? The Drunken Chicken Parm. So what exactly is a drunken chicken parm? It's everything you love about chicken parm with a little vodka sauce, beautiful color, beautiful aroma and the flavor you get that crispy, crunchy on the outside, definitely plenty of juice on the inside, but the creaminess of that sauce, I don't know the chemistry of why vodka makes tomato sauce that much better, but it does, I swear. And I haven't been drinking yet.
The drink of choice at the bar here is definitely the Espresso Martini. And believe it or not, last year alone, they served 21,000 espresso martinis. It's creamy, it's a little sweet, it has a serious coffee kick. Easy to see why this is such a popular drink.
Raso’s is just the perfect neighborhood suburban restaurant. It's not too casual, it's not too fancy, it's very tasteful. The service is great. Here you always see Richie walking around. So whether you come for a high end steak, a delicious pizza, or perhaps the greatest drunken chicken parm on the face of the earth, you're gonna get it all right here at Raso’s.
