Alfonzo's (italian - closed)

This is the approximate location of where Alfonzo's Italian restaurant used to be. Unfortunately, it is gone now and I do not think it was ever re-opened anywhere else. Alfonzo's used to have the best Italian food (traditional Italian that is; since I consider restaurants like Carrabba's to be the best of a different kind of Italian food). If you've ever been to Alfonzo's then many other Italian restaurants almost seem "bad" by comparison.

If anyone has any more information on Alfonzo's please post it -- especially if you know what happened after they closed.

Some things I remember about the place:
The interior layout had a lot of similarities to the first El Charro restaurant in Conyers, Ga (search wikimapia for it). You enter a small room where you pay. To the right was a small hallway (with a door) that led to the two quite small bathrooms. To the left were some stairs down (not a full floor lower though). When you got to bottom of the stairs, you either had to go left or right, since the room had a small room in the middle (were there stairs going upstairs in this room?). Anyways, you could sit sit anywhere around this room in the middle, except for the part where you first come down the stairs. Once you got down the stairs, to the right was the larger open area of the room. The far side of the room had windows, and I think it may have also had a door for getting outside to sit? Anyways, if you turned right and entered into this larger area of the room, then the windows would now be to your left and to your right would be a bar kind of area with wine glasses on the wall behind it. However, it wasn't a real bar, as there were no chairs to sit at it; in fact, there were tables next to it just like in the rest of the room. Also, to your right, right after you walk away from the stair area, and before the bar-like area, was a kind of hallway that led to the kitchen.

Food:
Alfonzo's had both Caesar and Italian Salad. I never ordered the Caesar Salad; however, I remember the Italian Salad. The salad dressing seemed quite homemade. It was thick in the sense that it had lots of herbs and pieces of ingredients in it; it was likely homemade. The salad also had a few things in it. It probably had olives and peperonocini peppers, thought I can't say this with certainty as I don't remember that stuff very well. Only once have I been to another Italian restaurant that seemed to have something close to the kind of homemade salad dressing that I recall from Alfonzo's (and that place is closed now too). This was just the beginning of what made Alfonzo's so special.
Alfonzo's also had garlic bread. It was in butter (melted) with garlic.

In regards to the meal, there was one meal that was particularly special: Chicken Alfonzo. It was a chicken breast (which he beat to tenderize I guess), that was battered and topped with salalmi and then cheese; however, the battering was not crunchy when you ate it. The whole thing was cooked in a mushroom, wine sauce. Although I don't eat mushrooms, I got 'em anyways for the flavor and just moved 'em to the side. This was the one dish that truly made Alfonzo's so special. After Alfonzo's closed, we have tried many different Italian restaurants and none are able to even come close to the taste of this dish.

Another dish that I remember was Chicken Ramano, which was basically exactly the same as Chicken Alfonzo, but with a different sauce -- a reddish kind of sauce. Although this dish (the name that is) can be found in other Italian restaurants, they taste nothing like the one from Alfonzo's.

Along with the meal you could get a choice of lasagna or spaghetti (later on they stopped offering the lasagna). The lasagna wasn't particularly worth noting; my mother is able to to cook a much better one and you can also find better ones at other restaurants. However, it came with the meal, which is quite nice.

Over time, we have tried other Italian restaurants, and let's just say that Alfonzo's has ruined it for the rest of them. I actually do not like many Italian restaurants out there, because they just do not measure to the high standard I have come to expect from Alfonzo's. Places like Italian Oven, Milano's, and other such chains simply do not compare. However, as I mentioned earlier, we did run across one place that seemed to have a homemade salad dressing, but they closed. I really loved Alfonzo's Italian food, but to this day, I do not really like Italian (traditional Italian) food restaurants, because they are simply not very good compared to Alfonzo's. On the other hand, I very much like Carraba's Italian food; however, I like to refer to it as the best of a different kind of Italian food, since the style of the food is quite different from the other types of Italian restaurants like Alfonzo's.

**License: public domain**