Not Exactly a Disney Movie

We traveled down to South Philly for the capper on the golf, football, relatives Friday. Villa Di Roma was the choice and if you are ever in South Philadelphia it is certainly some place you should add to your eating list. It is one of those restaurants thats screams authentic. You are looking out for one of the Sopranos to walk in the door while you wait for your table. In fact, it is apparently in the same vicinity of where Philip "The Chicken Man" Testa was blown up by a nail bomb sent to his row home. Yep, that kind of authentic.

But the good thing about that kind of restaurant is that the pasta is cooked fresh, the sausages are homemade and the prices are fair and kind of cheap. For drinks and a lovely filling italian dinner, it was only about $55 per couple. And that is including homemade cannolis. It is one of those restaurants that you would think you would see in Lady and the Tramp, though not as schmaltzy Italian. One drawback is the cash only policy, but it also should not be too surprising.

Now, this would be an extremely boring post if I did not have something else to it but a foodie review. Or at least, you would think I was in Villa Di Roma's pocket. I do want to stress that what I witnessed next had nothing to do with the restaurant at all.

We were walking back to the car, another slight complaint about South Philly, not alot of parking. And as we walked we passed a wide variety of shops, most closed. One of the shops was a well known butcher and gourmet food establishment in Philadelphia and I am not talking about Wawa. Well, there lights were still on inside and Tin Man, who was lagging a bit behind the rest of the group said something along the lines of "hmm will you look at that." I am the kinda guy who will always have my feathers perked by a statement like that and so I doubled back. Inside the store, amongst the food and such were not one but two mice running around there floor. I am not going to say they were rats, but I am also not going to call them sweet little field mice. They were healthy city mice, running amongst the grains and rice and pasta and who knows what. I still feel my stomach flipping a little bit now in thought about it. I know this can happen all the time in the city, but I am much better at being oblivious then actually seeing the evidence with my own eyes. Yick!