FERRARO’S RISTORANTE ITALIANO

By Mark Kent

Open for a year or so, this bistro is still trying to become a well-rounded, well run establishment. Service is spotty at best, as is the food.

We started with a taste of the soup of the day, a lobster bisque – creamy, hot and tasty then the Caesar salad consisting of greens and a few croutons; cheese shavings and a discernible Caesar dressing were absent – we then sampled the outsourced dressing and found it just ok – no credit to Caesar. The house salad – Insalata di Angelo was a nice dish in contrast, another salad..Insalata di Eugenio… is also on the menu.

Appetizers included a smooth and mild eggplant pate, a small crab cake with only faint crab taste but adorned with a nice corn relish it badly needed. Clams casino were small and very breaded, the clams in brodo had a gentle taste in their white wine sauce. Happy to say the bacon wrap scallops (3 in number) were served over polenta and were delicious.

There are nine pasta dished listed covering a wide variety or types with various accompaniments – we elected to test the pastas with our entrees.

Under the meat-poultry heading, we chose a too-well breaded veal parmigiana with nice sautéed spinach. We then sampled a very fine osso buco on a bed of saffron risotto – quite delicious, but quite a tiny meat portion.

As for fish – the Diver scallops were perfectly prepared with sun dried tomato and basil over tasty linguini. A portion of pan- seared salmon with apricot and roasted poblano was a nice portion of excellent fish.

We note 16 additional listings as meat…poultry and 4 additional listings under the fish category. There are 4 sides available – sautéed spinach, mushroom sautée, broccoli rabe and roasted beets. Note; not all are necessarily available at one’s sitting.

Chef has his choice of making 2 special desserts each evening – they may or may not include panna cotta, lemoncello cake, chocolate fudge cake, tiramisu (this creamy and wonderful). A half dozen other desserts are available.

Serving only wine and beer, this bistro seats 60 inside and up to 30 outside. Open from 5PM to 10PM Monday through Saturday, there is an early bird menu plus Chef’s specials daily. Entertainment in the form of an international duo-singer, pianist and violinist – play on Saturday from 7PM to 11PM. Call Ferraro’s at 561 -477-2750 for details –visit the bistro at 8208 Glades Road in Boca Raton to try their Northern Italian menu.