My wife's father had just gone through a hip-replacement surgery and was resting at his home in North Liberty afterward. Since my wife and her sister are still working from home, they felt they could move their workplaces to his condo to help out with his recovery. For lunch one day, they went over to Mirabito's, an Italian restaurant not far from where they were in North Liberty. My wife reported that the food was excellent. I had seen Mirabito's a handful of times on trips up to see my father-in-law and my step-daughter and her family and was always intrigued by the place. One recent evening, I went over to North Liberty to help my wife move her office back home and while we were there we went to Mirabito's for dinner.
Gregg Mirabito grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. His father was half-Italian and half-Lithuanian, while his mother was 100% Irish. Gregg's pale skin and red hair stood out amongst the other children of the neighborhood when he was growing up. Having a mixed culture exposed the young Mirabito to a number of different types of food. His paternal grandfather was a full-fledged Italian immigrant who married a Lithuanian woman who learned how to make Italian food for her husband. And Gregg's Irish mom learned many of those Italian dishes from her Lithuanian mother-in-law. But there was also Irish food served in the house including corned beef and cabbage on St. Patrick's Day.
Gregg ended up gravitating more to the Italian heritage in his family and learned how to make many of the Italian specialties his father liked. After graduating high school, he went west to go to college at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Gregg worked in a number of restaurants working his way through college.
It was at Kansas where he met Terri Wissman, a young lady who grew up in St. Louis, then moved to Kansas City with her family later on. Terri wasn't raised with the same culinary diversity Gregg enjoyed growing up and he introduced her to many of his family's favorite dishes made with an east coast flair. Gregg and Terri ended up getting married after getting out of college, and with the help of a local investor they opened Mirabito's Italian Cafe, a small restaurant in Lawrence that the two ran for about four years before a number of factors forced them to close the doors.
Pictured right - Terri and Gregg Mirabito. Photo courtesy Iowa City Press-Citizen.
Gregg was eventually hired to be a corporate chef for the Marriott chain of hotels. He worked for Marriott for nearly 20 years eventually going from the kitchen to the administrative offices as an assistant general manager. Marriott moved the Mirabito's to Iowa City when the then-new Coralville Marriott Hotel and Conference Center opened in 2007.
But it turned out that what Gregg wanted to do was to get back into the kitchen and run his own Italian restaurant again. Terri sensed that Gregg was getting antsy to be his own boss again and in 2013 they started to scout for locations for their restaurant. They found a place in a small strip mall along Highway 965 - the main north-south route through North Liberty - and the next year Mirabito's opened their doors.
To get to Mirabito's, well, it's a little tricky. From Highway 965, you turn onto W. Zeller St. heading west. You can either turn into the Casey's convenience store and go back past that building to Mirabito's; or you can turn south on Sugar Creek Lane and take a left into the small parking lot for the strip mall. There's a Mexican restaurant on one end of the building and Mirabito's is on the northeast corner of the building facing Highway 965. (see map)
We stepped inside and were met by Terri Mirabito. She told us we could sit about anywhere and we sat at a table at one of the windows in the restaurant. Mirabito's is not a large place and I didn't know if the tables were purposely spaced that way because of COVID-19 restrictions, or if this was their usual configuration. After dropping off a couple menus for us, she said that Michael would be our server for the evening. They were doing a robust "to-go" business during our visit.
Michael came over to say high and take our drink order. They had a handful of craft beers on the bar menu at Mirabito's and selected a Zoltan, a Mosaic/Citra-hopped IPA from the Exile Brewing Company in Des Moines. My wife was going to hold off on getting something until she figured out what she was going to order for food, then order a glass of wine.
The menu at Mirabito's looks like it came out of an old-school Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, NY. They had antipasti selections such as steamed mussels, a caprese salad, a meat charcuterie board, and a classic escargot featuring six large snails baked in a garlic and parsley-butter sauce. In addition to the antipasti selections, they had four salad entrees that you could add grilled chicken or shrimp to for an upcharge. They had a handful of sandwiches to choose from and a number of typical old-world Italian specialties such as chicken parmesan, linguine with clams, veal saltimbocca, fettuccine alfredo with broccoli, and a baked cannelloni made with beef, pork, spinach, onion, garlic and cheese, then topped with a combination of Mirabito's marinara and alfredo sauces.
They also had pizza at Mirabito's and my wife said their pizza was very good as that was what they took back to her father when they were staying with him during his recovery. I was tempted to try the pizza, but I really wanted to try something along the lines of a red sauce dish that evening.
The first thing Michael brought out to our table was a small square of cheese-and-herb-topped focaccia bread with some fresh shredded parmesan cheese served on the side. Olive oil was provided on the table to mix with the parmesan on a plate. The bread was light and spongy and sopped up the oil pretty easily.
We got salads with our meals that evening - I had a house salad with a red wine vinaigrette, while my wife got the Caesar's salad. The greens and veggies were fresh, cool and crispy. It was a pretty good salad, in my book.
For our main entrees that evening, my wife got the chicken piccata. The pounded chicken breasts came in a lemon, butter and white wine sauce, topped with chopped artichoke hearts, portobello mushrooms and tomatoes, then finished with capers and sprinkles of chopped parsley. It was all served on a bed of linguine. It looked delicious and my wife said that it was as good as it looked. She also ended up getting a glass of the house pinot grigio to go with her meal.
I was in the mood for some pasta with a marinara sauce. I thought about the chicken parmesan for a moment, but went with the basic spaghetti in Mirabito's house marinara. For an upcharge, I got a couple of their huge and very tasty meatballs on top of the spaghetti and marinara sauce. I ended up asking Michael for a side of marinara as I knew what I had on the spaghetti and meatballs wouldn't be enough for me. The marinara was sweet and tangy, and it had chunks of celery mixed in, along with an herb that was forward in flavor, but not obtrusive. The large meatballs had a mixture of pork and beef with herbs and bread crumbs baked in. It was a lot of food for just $13 dollars and I couldn't eat the whole thing. But it was wonderful. I also got a glass of wine with the meal - a bold Italian Zinfandel Primitivo. The taste of the wine exploded on my tongue when paired with the excellent marinara sauce.
Like any Italian restaurant of its kind, Mirabito's also has a nice little dessert list. Unfortunately, they were out of tiramisu that night, but had some other things like a house-baked marsala cheesecake, cannolis, and a chocolate torte. We ended up getting the lemon mascarpone cake served with a raspberry compote and a dollop of house-made whipped cream. The taste of the lemon mascarpone cake with the raspberries was out of this world. Adding the whipped cream to those two just made it even more sinful than what it was. It was an excellent end to what turned out to be a very good dinner.
Terri Mirabito came over to check on us. My wife explained that she had been in before, but it was my first time. "I really wanted to try the pizza," I said to her. "But on my first visit, I wanted to have something more than just pizza." Terri Mirabito said that her husband - being from New York - makes the old-fashioned thin-crust pizza. "Well, that's the kind we like," I said promising to give the pizza a try at some point in the future.
I said, "I know that spaghetti and meatballs is pretty basic, but it was very good. I really wanted something like a meat sauce and some penne pasta."
"Oh, we could have done that for you," Terri exclaimed. "We have an Italian sausage bolognese that we could have made up with penne pasta for you." I don't want to say I was disappointed when she told me that, but it made me want to come back and try that dish at some point.
Mirabito's was better than I expected it to be. For a little "mom-&-pop" operation, it exceeded some full-fledged Italian restaurants I've eaten at over the years. Mirabito's atmosphere is pretty basic, so don't go in there thinking that you're going to have a quiet and romantic dinner. But the service was very good, and I thought the food was outstanding. Even their basic spaghetti and meatballs with their house-made marinara sauce was excellent. My wife raved about her chicken piccata and how wonderful it tasted. With relatives in the North Liberty area, I won't be so hesitant in the future to accompany my wife to see them - only if a trip to Mirabito's is part of the deal.
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