Drew says:
Yarusso Brothers Italian Restaurant near Swede Hollow Park burned down in February. According to a poem on a wall inside, and a large mural painted on the outside of the building, a glorious, epicurean Phoenix emerged from the ashes in July. What actually materialized, though, wasn't the majestic mythical bird with fiery crimson and golden plumage, but an obese, mongoloid Chef Boyardee who has an irrational fear of the spice racks.
A bold, rich, flavorful red sauce is one of the most powerful, curative, life-giving elixirs on earth. I'm convinced that the perfect bolognese can cure cancer, stop hurricanes, get Jews and Muslims to have non-stop tickle-fights, and make Margaret Cho funny. A great one is worth its weight in gold. If you find the perfect gravy, treat it much like you would the perfect boyfriend or girlfriend...grab it and hold on as tight as possible, don't let it go out, and jealously guard it from seeing others. (I'm single, Ladies!) Yarusso's sauce, however, needs to be set free. I think we should see other pastas. It was bland, pale red or slightly orange, and had a strange sickly-sweet flavor I thought might be in the cardamom family (clearly, an abusive family). The banal sausages and meatballs added to the confusion. Why has this place survived since 1933?
Perhaps it's the people. The staff were friendly, helpful, and took time to answer our myriad questions. The prices were low, too. Cheap food, and LOTS of it. I recommend Yarusso's for chemical plant workers, glue huffers, and others whose taste buds have been burned out by years of inhaling solvents.
Curtis says:
Without exception, everyone loves classic Italian-American food. Your bratty 3-year old nephew who thinks his beige Matchbox Camry is cool, your crusty old uncle who makes Sid Hartman seem likeable, and even your food snob friends who pretended to be outraged when Chicago banned foie gras (Mon Dieu!) – all of them love slurping up sloppy spaghetti and dipping fluffy bread into a sweet and tangy tomato sauce. It's in the human genome. Anyone who tells you they don't love it is lying straight to your face. I wanted to love Yarussos. Great part of town, rich history, rising literally from the ashes, friendly staff, In-This-Economy prices, etc.
Remember the news reports of the Exxon Valdez disaster? Remember all the little wildlife struggling in vain to free themselves from the petroleum goo? They always had footage of some volunteer scrubbing a freaked out cormorant with a toothbrush. Or worse, the lower level do-gooders were scrubbing rocks. That was their assignment. Scrubbing rocks.
Unfortunately all the flavor in the food at Yarusso's is trapped under a goo of bland sauce and shredded cheese. All the dishes we ordered were smothered in the same tasteless blanket. Even the frozen, unsalted pizza dough had toppings smothered under cheese and were unable to be cooked. The only dish that seemed to burst out a little flavor was the Italian-style fried catfish. And I'm guessing that's because the fish breading had some built-in salt and pepper before frying. Yarusso Brothers needs a Prius full of gustatory do-gooders to scrub the sauce-cheese off the food and set the flavor free.
It's no fun ripping a restaurant. People are usually working their asses off to make a living and provide a product to make customers happy. On this visit, it seemed like the product was longevity and reputation - not the food. If I'm craving some old-timey Italian-American delights, I'm heading down the street to DeGidio's.
Trick says:
Yarusso Brothers Italian Restaurant is a St. Paul institution. It sits near the south end of Payne Avenue in the heart of Swede Hollow, an immigrant enclave for more than a century and once a miniature version of New York's Lower East Side, teeming with dry-goods stores, garment workers, and day laborers. And as the Yarussos are quick to tell you--on their storefront, on their menu, on their Website--they have been serving up the same family recipes since 1933. With a homegrown working-class pedigree like that, you're almost guaranteed delicious food and an authentic experience, right? Not exactly.
Let's start with the lesser of my two gripes, the ambience of the place. I think that like most people, when I go to an old-school Italian restaurant, I expect the kitschy homages to the homeland--you know, the self-consciously mismatched wine glasses and the place mats bearing a map of Italy--but why do we need TVs running all three Godfather movies simultaneously or autographed photos of the Sopranos cast? Isn't this like a Mexican restaurant showing Slowpoke Rodriguez cartoons or a sushi bar hanging photos of Japanese toddlers doing calculus? Add to that the palsied paintings of Doric columns and the Roman Colosseum that adorn the dining room, and you've got yourself Vito Corleone's idea of a sports bar: the TVs show mob shootouts instead of football games and the walls are decorated with marble ruins instead of license plates.
Now all of this would be easy to overlook (hell, it might even be charming) if the food was special. But here was the real letdown. My companions and I ordered almost all of the restaurant's signature dishes, and with only rare exceptions they came up bland. The baked Manicotti and baked Mostaccioli were so covered in cheese that they were virtually indistinguishable from each other. The other pasta dishes came in a speciality sauce whose bits of green pepper watered down any hint of basil, oregano, or red pepper that might have been there. Most disappointing of all, the rigatoni was overcooked and flaccid (that's what she said). The few items that partially redeemed the meal were the fried catfish with pasta and red sauce--a clever Minnesotan-Italian fusion--and the meatballs and sausages, which seemed to have a hint of anise and were mind-blowingly massive (that's what she said).
It's that comment about portion size where my review should conclude. For before I considered food quantity, I was left puzzling over how Yarussos could be successful with such mediocre quality. But then it occurred to me; it probably had something to do with the way they kept harkening back to 1933. When you think of 1933, what are you left with if you take away George Burns radio programs, the loving family life of the Waltons, and guys in jaunty hats saying "Hold on right there, buster"? Labor unrest, FDR's fireside chats, and that dude selling 5-cent apples on Wall Street. That's right, the Great Depression, and it sucked. For those few Depression-era Americans who could afford a meal out with the family, they demanded predictability and quantity. And that's exactly what you'll get at Yarussos. Maybe that's all a lot of people are looking for in these tough times as well. But if you're looking for a neighborhood Italian restaurant that will do more than fill you up, this isn't it.
Vin says:
Like most pretentious folk, I spend hours railing against the dreadful food and artificiality of the suburbs. You know the place: Ye Olde Hamburger Shoppe, in a faux brick mall with the world's greatest chicken wings. Enough. So, how could I not be happy at the thought of going to a place like Yarusso's? The history of being St. Paul's oldest family owned Italian restaurant and tradition carrying through three generations draws me in like a black hole. Then there is overcoming the recent destruction from a fire. According to its owners, there was never a doubt this place would come back, and the customers have responded in kind. The reverence for this place is legion; Yarusso's has a claim on its neighborhood and generations from St. Paul.
The loud, gleaming interior is what Bucca tries to be but never manages to pull off. This is kitchy, but an earned form of it– murals to Swede Hollow, Soprano's pictures, bad poetry and all three Godfather movies playing at the same time. It's one thing to have a butter bust of Elvis to be cute, but you're entitled to a tacky mural to Swede Hollow after you fed its denizens. The owners are sincere and lovable, and the servers kind, if somewhat inept. Yarusso's somehow retains its charm with all its enjoyable distractions.
So what is there not to like about this place? Well, the food comes to mind. Oh, there was a lot of it. It was the kind of spread you wished for after a stint on "Survivor." The only problem is that it was mediocre. The Pasta Supreme and the Dago Supreme were indistinguishable though one was served on bread- both were just a mass of peppers, onions, mushrooms, meat and starch. I was more hopeful turning towards anything with red sauce on it. This was the first thing Yarusso's started simmering once the new restaurant passed code. The mostaccioli and rigatoni with its mighty red wouldn't let me down, right? It did. Again these were colossal dishes where overcooked pasta was paired with a red sauce that couldn't stand on its own. The first few bites were enticing, but then it went on longer than "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." About the only thing I found myself going back for were some of the smaller dishes we had ordered: the fried catfish, eggplant and sausage. While not brilliant, these were a welcome refuge from the pasta.
Despite its faults, I still have a hard time trashing Yarusso's– there is more going on here than just the food. Bring your kids and your appetite as you might not need to eat for days. Going to Yarusso's and hoping to find fine Italian food is like going to Cancun and hoping to see Mexico. You might like what you find, but you'll be disenchanted if you were expecting more.
