By Mark Kent
This year old, 200 seat traditional restaurant has a wealth of diverse dishes including some 9 appetizers on their standard menu. The calamari fritte had a sweet, tender taste and texture, a fine dish. The mussels marino style were juicy and flavorful while the clams “oreganta’s” heavy breading just overpowered the true clam taste – chef take note. The antipasto was a true mini-tasting…with salami, sopressata, prosciutto, black and green olives aplenty plus roasted peppers, provolone, reggiano and fresh anchovies – nice dish.
Of the five salads, Dee, Ed and this reviewer chose a bright, fresh spinach salad with dried cranberries, walnuts, red onions and feta cheese in a balsamic dressing – perfect. Unfortunately, the Caesar salad had a week bland dressing that put us off.
We opt to forego any of the eight pizza offering and attended to the pasta selections – 13 in total. We loved the fettuccine Alfredo – light yet very flavorful with its great sauce. Penne vodka in a red sauce was deep flavored and delicious as was the Rigatoni Bolognese with a very traditional sauce. We also sampled the Bucatini alla Amatriciana – new for us with long pasta, pancetta, onions and Romano cheese in a rich, full bodied tomato sauce. Damiano does pasta right!
From the five veal dishes listed – we selected the veal piccata, large, tender slices of veal pounded thin and sautéed with capers in a light wine and lemon butter sauce – served with a potato puree and sautéed spinach. We could imagine no finer dish! This meat listing also features veal Francese, veal Paillard, veal Parmigiana, short ribs and pork chop vinegar peppers-all well adorned.
For the seafood listings, we happily chose the Sole Francese – a huge fish steak in a light, tasty batter for a winning choice. One may try shrimp marinara, shrimp scampi, shrimp fra diavolo, calamari and salmon livornese.
We felt that tasting a sample of both picatta style and Francese style would prove much of the restaurants ability.
FYI – seven chicken dishes prevail – all nicely dressed. Some 15 side dishes are listed …in case the entrees sides need to be augmented.
Sampling the tiramisu was a genuine treat to the palette – sweet and very flavorful as was the
smooth chocolate gelato – a fitting end to a fine meal.
Note that Damiano has a kids menu featuring eight choices at very low cost. Also, daily specials are added to their standard menu. We checked the wine menu – there are 7 whites and 7 reds by the glass, 18 white and 30 red by the bottle and 4 champagnes.
Located at 3011 Yamato Road in the Woodfield Plaza Center, Danny di Tonno’s hours are 4:30PM to 11PM, all seven days. Pricing is realistic for quality fare, so we suggest you – Go and Enjoy!
