The Amalfi Grille: One of Vero’s very best
When it comes to choosing a top restaurant for a special occasion – a dinner for two, perhaps, where you are ready to drop a couple of hundred dollars or more on a great meal accompanied by an extraordinary wine – it is fairly easy in Vero to spend the money. Several beachside restaurants will be more than happy to see you. But you don’t always leave feeling you received value for dollar.
Not so at the Amalfi Grille, a small Italian restaurant now in its third year on Royal Palm Pointe that compares favorably -- in food, selection of wines, and ambience -- to restaurants of this kind in New York, Boston or any major city up north.
Proprietor Bob Rose clearly understands that it all starts with the ingredients. As a result, he buys the best from the best vendors -- whether it’s veal, beef, seafood, veggies or wine.
At the Amalfi, your meal begins with wine, and the wine selection is among the better (and arguably the most fairly priced) in town. While you can savor some highly regarded reserve Brunellos if you are in a mood to splurge, you can do almost as well with some far more modestly priced selections.
On this most recent visit, before we got to picking a mid-range bottle, Amalfi proprietor Bob Rose surprised us by suggesting we start with a couple of glasses of Soave ($10) – a wine we thought we had left behind in the ‘70s along with bell-bottom jeans, disco, and “Saturday Night Fever.”
This crisp Italian wine, which virtually disappeared a couple of decades ago, is making a huge comeback, and did not taste even remotely like the jug whites called Soave that we remembered. Maybe it’s time to revisit disco as well.
For appetizers on this visit, I ordered the roasted beet salad special ($14) and my husband went for the calamaretti Amalfi ($14).
The sliced roasted beets were served over arugula with fennel, toasted filberts and maytag blue cheese with a lemon and extra virgin olive oil dressing. Very tasty. The calamari, very lightly fried with cannelloni beans and cherry peppers in a lemon and white wine sauce, had a good kick. This remains one of my favorites.
Following our appetizers, we had very nice house salads – included with all meals.
Filetto di Arogosta: A six-ounce filet topped with Maine lobster and sherry cream sauce.
Then for entrees, I ordered the hog snapper piccata ($32) while my husband (for about the 90th time) went for the grilled veal chop ($38).
The beautiful pieces of fresh hog snapper, egg battered and sautéed with white wine lemon butter and capers, were served over spinach. A very successful dish. My husband’s veal, which we were told was Plume de Veau, an upgrade from the more commonly found Provimi, was very tasty – but not quite as tender as one would have expected. Still, a nice piece of veal perfectly prepared with a delicious mushroom ragout.
On a previous visit, I had the lobster fra diavolo ($34) and my husband ordered the ravioli arogosta ($24).
The 7-ounce Maine lobster tail was perfectly prepared, as were the clams, mussels and shrimp that accompanied it on a bed of linguini. But it needed a bit more of the “spicy” red sauce and could have – for my taste – been a little spicier. My husband’s lobster ravioli was delicious, accompanied by perfectly cooked jumbo sea scallops in a tasty vodka cream sauce.
On our most recent visit, for dessert, I had a very light chocolate cake with layers of chocolate and espresso mousse, and my husband had blueberry bread pudding. While I prefer chocolate, my husband made such quick work of the bread pudding I didn’t even get to try it. On a previous visit, we had a limoncello cheesecake which was also tremendous. The Amalfi Grille has a great pastry chef. And if you are of a mind to finish with espresso, the espresso is as good as it gets.
Dinner for two with a mid-range bottle of wine comes to about $160 before tip. With a great bottle of wine, it can come to considerably more.
The Amalfi Grille is not only Vero’s top Italian restaurant, but one of its top restaurants, period. For good food, good wine, good value -- and a proprietor who genuinely cares about all three – the Amalfi Grille is very hard to beat.
I welcome your comments, and encourage you to send feedback to me at tina@verobeach32963.com.
The reviewer is a beachside resident who dines anonymously at restaurants at the expense of Vero Beach 32963.
Hours
Dinner Daily, 5:30 pm to closing, Lunch: Monday to Friday, 11:30 am to 2:30 pm
Bar
Beer and wine bar
Address (MAP)
8 Royal Palm Pointe, Vero Beach, FL, Telephone: (772) 564-8218
