By ZELORY GREGLER //
As devout foodies and open-minded supernaturalists, Christine and I set out for Psychic Night at Carrabba’s Italian Grill with great enthusiasm.
It was a can’t-miss event: An evening with best friends Dave and Kim, a delicious menu worthy of the Old Country and a trained team of mediums and astrologers from Ronkonkoma-based Long Island Psychics bearing gifts from the beyond – all for $80 per person! (Cash only, because apparently taxes don’t fly in the spirit realm.)
You didn’t need a sixth sense to predict this would be a huge hit for Carrabba’s of Smithtown. The food there is always great (my sister Karen compares Carrabba’s to The Olive Garden, which she says is a good thing) and the premise was just endearing enough to push past “hokey” and inch toward “promising.”
Like I said, Christine and I are big paranormal enthusiasts. I’m an “X Files” devotee, she’s into Ed and Lorraine Warren of “The Conjuring” fame; we’re both big Mike Flanagan fans, we’ve read plenty of Stephen King and Dean Koontz, and we’ve collectively burned hundreds of hours on YouTube “caught on camera” compilations (Slapped Ham and Sir Spooks are particular favorites). Such tastes go a long way when contemplating Psychic Night.
Dave was our team skeptic – five senses are more than enough for him – but Kim was equally excited by the idea, so off we eagerly went. And we weren’t alone: Even with reservations required, the line at Carrabba’s was literally out the door, and when we finally got to the reception desk, the open till was stacked with enough big bills to choke the Amazing Kreskin.
Zelory Gregler: Ghost pepper.
Even with messages from the dead and future insights on tap, I was most excited about the food (the advertisements promised “salad, entrée and dessert”). I’m an Italian food snob – Mama Z raised me right – but Karen ain’t wrong: Carrabba’s has got the goods. So I studied their online menu in advance, eager to narrow my selections and not waste precious time at the event.
After careful consideration, I had it down to the stuffed-mushrooms appetizer (packed with sausage, spinach and four cheeses, served over a tomato-cream sauce, and if apps weren’t part of the package, screw it, we’d splurge) followed by either the Chicken Bryan (wood-grilled and topped with goat cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, basil and a lemon-butter sauce), the Spiedino di Mare (grilled shrimp and scallops coated with Italian breadcrumbs and that lemon-butter sauce) or the Tuscan-grilled ribeye (16 heavenly ounces, paired with parmesan truffle fries).
Alas, these were not to be. Turns out the Psychic Night prix fixe included a Caesar’s salad and a choice of lobster ravioli, chicken parmesan or a 7-ounce sirloin with mashed potatoes.
Don’t get me wrong, everything was delicious (three of our party opted for the ravioli, which was delicate and creamy and plentiful, and I tried to replicate my dream meal with the sirloin, which was tiny but perfectly cooked and ultimately satisfying). But if you walk in anticipating a Big Mac and all you can get is a Filet o’ Fish, well, that’s a letdown.
If nothing else, the limited menu positioned the psychic readings as the true main course. We were selected to go up one at a time for our personal reading with one of the psychics; I landed on a tarot card reader who was young and pretty and – however gifted she might have been in the mystic arts – certainly skilled at batting her big brown eyes.
Mediums? Rare: Carrabba’s Italian Grill, where the elite meet to eat (and sometimes contact the dead).
Of the four of us, it’s fair to say my “psychic experience” was the most on-point. Kim was kinda mum afterward and Dave just sorta rolled his eyes; Christine got a witch with energy-altering rocks and her reading was a mess: “You have three kids” (no), “the youngest is a girl” (nope), “you went through a recent breakup” (nuh-uh).
But my tarot-card-reading medium actually nailed a few salient points, noting that one of my sons has traveled extensively (Zach took a study-abroad trip to Norway last year) and the other is a musician (Harry plays piano and xylophone), predicting better financial fortunes ahead (lord knows they can’t get any worse) and sensing I’m “surrounded by spirits,” especially since I dream often of my deceased parents (sure, why not).
I also shuffled and selected the tarot cards myself, and while my psychic quickly tossed the “meditation” card – “Not for you,” she accurately assessed – another was the “blessed event” card. Christine and I will marry in May.
Ultimately, I can’t fault these psychics or their readings. These might have been the most gifted seers on all of Long Island, but exhibiting their talents in a big, chaotic restaurant on a packed Thursday night, with every table filled and a dozen servers whirling about and the Rangers and Knicks both playing on the bar screens … certainly, auras were fritzed.
Fortunately, the company was great, the Sogno di Cioccolata (a fudge brownie, chocolate mousse, whipped cream and chocolate sauce) was sinfully good and the whiskey was Irish. Get over the limited menu, lower your voices-from-the-hereafter expectations and go with the flow, and there have definitely been worse meals.
Tonight, we dine at Orto with Karen. Full menu. For the living, it doesn’t get much better than that.
Zelory “Celery” Gregler has been cooking for most of his life, and eating for all of it.
