Florida weather in September/October may be like living in a steam bath, but there's an upside: No reservations needed at good restaurants & less noise within. It's not a bad trade-off.
Whenever we visit, we try to include Cafe Vico in our dining plans. It's consistently good, you receive a warm welcome from its owner, & the service is excellent. I love the ambiance: three inviting, smallish, rooms, cozy, dark-stained wood bar & accents, earthy yellow walls, raised blue ceilings that appear to be filled with night-lit clouds, "antique" accessories such as musical instruments, film paraphernalia, framed pictures of celebraties of a bygone era. Cafe Vico is like an inviting hearth.
With the complimentary bruschetta, my husband & I both ordered house salads, romaine lettuce, olives, excellent tomatoes, shredded carrots, served with a marvelous tomato vinaigrette. It looked as if the tomatoes in it had been coarsely pureed.
As much as I enjoy perusing the extensive menu at Cafe Vico, nine times out of ten I end up ordering the whole wheat pasta with spinach, garlic (enough to stun a mule!), tomatoes (lots of them) & basil. It's intensely flavored & although heavy on the garlic, at least the slivers are large enough that you can cast them aside. This entree easily could be shared. With it I had a glass of chianti riserva. I don't remember the estate & the vintage wasn't listed, but it was just fine with the pasta, more than fine. I felt mellow, happy, & glad to be there.
My husband's choice was strange & I'm not sure really Italian in origin. The dish featured two types of ravioli. The first was filled with chicken & napped with a very buttery bing cherry sauce. While utterly delicious, it was so rich that he accompanied it with a Prilosec! He wasn't taking any chances. The other ravioli was filled with lobster & was supposed to be napped with more lobster in some kind of cream sauce. Instead, they put fresh chopped tomatoes over it without sacrificing any flavor. It's not something he would order again but still, it tasted great & thanks to the Prilosec, he suffered no ill effects.
We're home now, happy to be back in colder, not so damp, weather. But there's definitely something good to be said about Florida's off-season.
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Cafe Vico
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