Buon Appetito!

There's just about nothing better than good Italian food. Am I right?? (Unfortunately, it's also way too easy to stumble across mediocre or even downright bad Italian food. As a general principle, I stay away from those family-style Italian places where the servings are HUGE but every dish is some banal version of pasta with an acidic marinara sauce. Not mentioning any names, but you know who you are, Buca... di... well, you know.)

I was delighted to discover that there is an excellent Italian place literally just down the road from my office. I was first at Il Postale in Sunnyvale for a business lunch a couple of months ago and was pretty happy with the 4-cheese ravioli I ordered. In fact, I liked it so much that I dragged Special K there for dinner one night a couple of weeks after my inaugural lunch. We had another excellent meal and then just last week, I arranged to meet Ginger there for dinner after work. We were very strategic in our ordering, splitting a bruschetta starter and then also splitting our salmon and rigatoni entrees so we could try as many different things as possible.

So, at this point, I'm 3 for 3 -- can't complain!

And on this last visit, I made friends with Joe, the owner, who was wonderful and very helpful with his menu and wine suggestions.

Aside from the food, Il Postale is absolutely adorable as a restaurant -- it is located in the original Sunnyvale post office building ("post office" sounds SO much better in Italian, doesn't it?) with a fairly intimate indoor dining area and a quaint outdoor patio. You can also get the full menu at the bar (which is exactly where Joe set Ginger and I up, so he could take care of us all evening).

I highly recommend Il Postale. And if you're questioning my tastes based upon previous posts about pizza and barbeque, you should know that CitySearch.com voted Il Postale Silicon Valley's best Italian restaurant for 7 out of the past 8 years.

Il Postale is located at 127 W. Washington Avenue in Sunnyvale.