The Seahawk

Restaurant review: Fork ‘n’ Cork, from food truck to gastro pub

Autumn Rankin | Contributing Writer September 17, 2014

Former Wilmington food truck “The Patty Wagon” has been reborn into one of downtown’s coziest new gastro pubs, “The Fork ‘n’ Cork”. Serving traditional American food and burgers and sporting...

SOAR says: Try 30-day Vegan Pledge

Through the month of April, Students Organizing for Animal Rights (SOAR) will be hosting a Vegan Pledge program. The program consists of weekly meetings, and the organization will discuss topics of ethics,...

Tabitha Shiflett gives tips for making Thanksgiving special at college. She also provides microwave recipes for delicious Thanksgiving meals that dont require the effort and money that typically go into cooking a turkey in this way.

Keep your Thanksgiving traditions alive away from home

Tabitha Shiflett | Staff Writer November 13, 2013

Tabitha Shiflett gives tips for making Thanksgiving special at college. She also provides microwave recipes for delicious Thanksgiving meals that don't require the effort and money that typically go into cooking a turkey in this way.






Sauteed shrimp and avocado taco special with cucumber salad.

Sealevel City Gourmet: vegetarian, gluten-free, fresh

Lindsey Hogan | Contributing Writer September 19, 2013

Sauteed shrimp and avocado taco special with cucumber salad.

Inaugural North Carolina beer month comes to Wilmington

 North Carolina kicked off its first North Carolina Beer Month Monday, April 1. The North Carolina Division of Tourism and the North Carolina Brewer's Guild chose April to celebrate over 75 North Carolina...

You are what you eat

Hypothetically, let's say you eat Cook-Out every Saturday afternoon. It's cheap and, hey, you went to the gym today (or last week sometime). No one will ever know about the cheeseburger with fries.  That...

Not just another party

Wings from several local eateries, cheap beer and live country music-not to mention a little friendly competition-equal out to a perfect afternoon in Carolina Beach. Or at least, the folks that headed...

Organic food is safer but not more nutritious

Roxy Simons | Staff Writer September 5, 2012

Long before Alicia Silverstone made veganism sexy, organic foods were steadily rising as a popular and healthy trend throughout the United States. After the USDA released national standards for organic...

New sports bar opens on New Center Drive

If I told you that you could party on the deck of the USS North Carolina while drinking your favorite microbrew, eating delicious food and cheering your favorite team to victory, you'd probably think that...

AraMark Disabled Employees in the Work Place

McLeod Brown | Staff Writer March 4, 2012

Across the dining halls on campus, mentally handicapped employees can be found performing duties and jobs that go along with the protocol of running a successful college eatery. Students often acknowledge...

Italian dining takes root at Osteria Ciccheti’s

Juliane Bullard | Lifestyles Editor February 14, 2012

 

Osteria Cicchetti's main dining room displays relics that are from another time. The rustic natural wood tabletops coupled with cherry wood dining booths transport one to an era when wine was sipped from brass goblets. Rusted mirrors broken up in framed cherry wood, to match the booths, skirt the walls at mid-waist. Wine sits behind steel cages and decorating the corners of the restaurant sit stocks of wheat bunched in cream-colored ceramic urns that are as tall as a toddler reaching for the cookie jar. Columns that look like remnants of the Coliseum itself divide the room. However, the ornate columns, which look like they have been dipped in coffee to appear older than they are, are a stark contrast to the feeling in the room: comfortable informality.

           

With bare bulbs dangling from exposed pipes and two votive candles at every table, Osteria Cicchetti's makes dining at the local tavern an intimate experience. A table of UNCW professors sit in the corner, a couple whose gray hair peeks out the temples of their heads sit closely nuzzled in another, and a family with several squeaky and boisterous young children in the back room make Osteria Cicchetti's a place for all ages.

           

Within minutes a waiter fills glasses from a tall pitcher of water that is left on the table. Brought straight in the baker's pan is Italian bread still lightly dusted with flour. While the slightly scorched pan suggests warm, doughy bread just taken out of the oven, it is cold and doesn't taste authentic. However, the buttery and crispy flat bread that breaks with a sharp snap makes up for the lack-luster loafs of traditional Italian bread.  Hearty, filling and bottomless, it's not exactly what you want before courses where diets and portion control is not a priority.

           

While the endless pans of bread are dangerous for calorie counters, the cold plate is a must have appetizer. Any combination of spreads, bruschette, cicchetti, cheese, and meat is available but the soft and sharp fontina cheese is the highlight of the options. It complements the meat options and can be easily paired with the bread for a mini sandwich before the main course.

           

While the menu is full of traditional Italian meals, many of which are not commonly known, the staff is able to accurately describe and recommend entrées anyone would enjoy.

For picky eaters, the spaghetti cicchetti puts a slight spin on the traditional spaghetti and meatballs with the addition of semi-spicy Italian sausage and parmesan cheese stuffed meatballs. While the dish could have used more meat and less pasta, the overall effect of a hearty dish was achieved with lots of room for leftovers.

           

However, the most sumptuous entrée available is the rigate melanzane which boasts the most flavorful eggplant even a carnivore would drool at. The light, salty and squishy eggplant is mixed throughout the dish so that a taste of it is taken in every bite. The complexity of flavors between the eggplant and the mozzarella sprinkled over pasta shells was a delicious spin to a vegetarian meal.

           

Osteria Cicchetti's brings back menu items that seem to originate from the old country. The variety of cold plate options, portions the size of your head, and everything made fresh from local producers whenever possible, is just the beginning to what makes Osteria Cicchetti's a place to frequent again and again. Osteria Cicchetti's is Italian dining done right. 

Feast DownEast: where local food meets university demand

Lauren Clairmont | Staff Writer February 8, 2012

Today, 12 percent of UNCW's total food cost is dedicated to buying local, an initiative that in the not so distant past was not heavily pursued on UNCW's campus, but with new grassroots organization Feast...

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Culture: Food