Muscio's Italian Restaurant, Novato

Attendance in our church would go up if it had Monday
night football on two flatscreens above the bar.

Arriving in Novato, a city 25 miles north of San Francisco, after 8 p.m., we found few restaurants open on Monday night. Muscio's looked promising because of the number of cars parked outside.

Upon entering, we looked up to see an unobstructed view of the roof. The restaurant occupied the original location of 123-year-old Our Lady of Loretto Catholic Church.

The waitress brought us freshly-baked garlic bread, which was consumed in short order. A second basket was used to sop up the sauce from our pasta dishes, which were uniformly excellent. Everything was made on the premises, the waitress said. She invited us to return with three discount coupons, expiring January 31st. We'll be returning to the North Bay in a couple of weeks and will take her up on it. © 2013 Stephen Yuen