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Dining & Spirits
More Gusto with These Italian Restaurants
A roundup of places that are sure to please.
 Fabrizio Schenardi, chef at Pelagia in Tampa, serves up rack of lamb with pistachio crust and fig sauce. |
At the modern generation of Italian restaurants, the flavors are louder than the hosts — and more robust.
This gusto comes specifically from Sardinia and the Miami Beach restaurant of the same name that speaks with its distinct accent. Veteran restaurateur Pietro Vardeu shares his island’s robust taste for a wide net of seafood, mountain lamb and valley vegetables and traditional recipes, pastas like tiny kernels of fregola or the wrinkled flat bread as thin as old sheet music.
Sardinia is a dramatic, isolated corner of Italy’s kitchen where the cooking is simple, with ancient recipes and open flames that preserve natural tastes. It’s only one of many cuisines we have missed, from wintry Friuli down to rugged Puglia, each with its cheeses, wines, salami and pasta (or polenta, gnocchi or risotto).
American diners tend to divide Italian eating into two big pots. The first is a back-slapping, red-sauced helping of chicken cacciatore, meatballs, pizza and straw-basket wine; the other, long on beef, cream and hand-kissing, we’ve wrongly dubbed Northern Italian. This, of course, skips pleasures like Sardinia’s caramelized Brussel sprouts with cippoline onions and sweetbreads. Or its oxtail stew, baby clams in saffron, cockles with chili and basil, veal meatballs with fennel or goat cheese and island honey, or twisty garganelli with boar sausage, and wood-roasted suckling pig. To go with them, Vardeu and partner Tony Gallo pour crisp Sardinian vermentino and lusty Cannonau.
Closeness to land and sea, particular lands and seas, lets diners and chefs reach back to taste when foods were more local and different. That love of the fresh, handmade and aged — not just a replication of a specific region — enlivens smart Italian cooking around the state:
» Nonna, a cozy trattoria in Orlando’s College Park opened by local hero Kevin Fonzo, makes its own sausage and sauces, prefers clams with fennel and pancetta and serves grouper with lentils, spinach and sun-dried tomatoes.
» Under a galaxy of contemporary Italian glass at Pelagia in Tampa, chef Fabrizio Schenardi, from the Piemonte and Liguria, sets a broad table with a broadly Mediterranean theme, but the stars are lustily Italian, homemade
grappa, crisp polenta and sizzling scottadito lamp chops.
» This new/old Italian can be so earthy that Escopazzo, a South Beach pioneer, calls it organic, from vegan raw lasagna to veal chops with walnut and sage.
» The catering Lyon brothers of Lincoln Road have pledged allegiance to the Slow Food flag. At the new Fratelli Lyon in Miami’s Design District, you can start with a small plate of baby octopus, potatoes and Gaeta olives, try a dozen cheeses or sink into maccheroni with veal ragu and cauliflower on the side.
» Palm Beach’s newest Italian, Forte di Asprinio, keeps farm-friendly Italian without giving up high flash. Antipasti include caprese salad with watermelon, clam-fennel brodo and its own salamis; for entrees, chef Mark Liberman makes Kobe meatballs and gnocchi with zucchini and mint. On top is the namesake celebrity and style of Stephen Asprinio, whiz kid sommelier and star of “Top Chef,” only 26.
