Trader Giotto's Lobster Ravioli

The first and foremost thing that drew me to pick up Trader Joe's Lobster Ravioli was their appearance. For whatever reason, I didn't take a great picture (actually, no picture at all) of these big old guys with the crazy red thick red stripes on them. Perhaps I've lived a fairly sheltered life as it relates to stuffed pastas, but I've never seen such a thing as striped ravioli, or if I have, I've haven't remembered, so it doesn't count. These, though...these are loud and proud and not afraid to express their semolina selves to the world. You go, ravioli. Although, it's not like different colored pasta taste all that radically different from regular, so I'm not sure of the practical use. About the only reason I can think of is somehow a game of Ravioli Crush Saga broke out and you need to know which one you can count on wiping out an entire row. A pretty similar game is the one Shelly household obsession right now. Another one, to not the same degree, is "Kitchen Nightmares" on Netflix, and on a recently watched episode, Gordon Ramsey picked up a handful of (you guessed it) red striped lobster ravioli (dried) and unleashed a string of bleeps so superfluous that I'm not even sure what words 90% of the bleeps were bleeped for. It was amazing, and it also shows that having red-striped lobster ravioli is at least some sort of common practice.

The second thing that tempted me into buying them was the thought of tasty, chunky, lobstery, yummy bites wrapped up in some pasta and served with a little sauce. In my mind, that's what lobster ravioli is, though I have no experience to base that on. I should've figured differently, because that's not exactly what's inside. Instead of big ol' lobster chunks, it's probably something that Ramsey would call lobster baby food as it's all mashed and pureed up, and mixed in with all sorts of other stuff. Ours were a tad salty and a wee bit gritty, but overall  pretty decent. I liked the fact that, at least on a flavor and texture basis, they weren't too ricotta-like. There's just enough lobster in each one to be the dominant flavor and gets complemented well with the little shake of mozzarella they had. We served them up with a little vodka sauce, but I'm thinking perhaps a light butter or lemon pepper sauce would've been a better match. Regardless, while not overly impressive, and certainly not as fancy as their appearance initially made me think, the ravioli made a decent enough quick weeknight meal, and was close to worth the $4 we dropped on the sack of 'em.

Sandy also would've preferred bigger chunks of actual lobster in them. Then again, that'd probably jack the price up, but I could be on board for that. Other than that, she didn't have to say, which means about a three, which sounds right about right to me as well.

Bottom line: Trader Joe's Lobster Ravioli: 6 out of 10 Golden Spoons.