✭✭✭1/2
Review: Casa Macaluso in Pompano Beach
By Judith Stocks, Sun Sentinel
Important: This article was last updated on March 12, 2010. Please call ahead to confirm hours, prices, dates and other information.
 |
 1825 E. Sample Road, Pompano Beach 954-788-0255 casamacaluso.com Cuisine: Italian Cost: moderate to expensive Hours: dinner Monday-Saturday Reservations: strongly advised for Friday and Saturday Credit cards: AE, MC, V Bar: beer, wine Sound level: quiet Outside smoking: no For kids: high chairs Wheelchair accessible: yes  |
|
Background: Sicilian natives and siblings Carlo and Antonio Macaluso are living a labor of love and savoring every moment in their 52-seat restaurant opened since October. Classically trained with an impressive resume that includes DeVito South Beach, chef Carlo prepares food from recipes handed down through generations of family in the restaurant business for nearly 100 years. Antonio acts as general manager, pitching in wherever needed.Ambience: There's romance in the air from the minute you step through the white picket fence entry lined with flowers. Walls are polenta colored. Tables are covered in white linens. Banquettes are cushy. Italian movies play silently on wall monitors.
Starters: Guests are welcomed with complimentary capanata, olives, baby sweet red peppers bulging with soppresata, fontina, raisins, pine nuts, shallots and bread crumbs, and strips of the Sicilian pizza sfincione. A cheese knife is used to dig out shards of Parmigiano-Reggiano from a wheel set on the table. The cheese is then drizzled with balsamic reduction. If that doesn't assuage appetites, Nonna's softball-sized meatball balanced with beef, pork and veal is crowned with whipped ricotta on flavorful San Marzano sauce ($9.75).
Entree excellence: Show stopping mushroom risotto with al dente arborio, wild mushrooms and white truffle oil ($20.75) is finished in the dining room in a hollowed out wheel of Parm-Reg. The risotto gets a quick flambe before just enough stirring causes the cheese to ooze into the rice. Salt-encrusted fish always has dramatic potential and this Branzino ($32.75) is no exception. Presented salt crust intact then swiftly taken to the chef's table at the rear of the dining room, it's deboned, plated, and returned in all its exquisite perfection. Equally impressive in both presentation and flavor is veal parmigiana ($33.75). The 16-ounce fork tender, center cut, bone-in veal chop is pounded, panko breaded and topped with mozzarella, fontina and San Marzano sauce, with room for a side of ricotta gnocchi. Pastas ($12.75-$18.75) can be fresh or dried, but the homemade fettuccine in anything gets my vote.
Sweet!: Decadent panna cotta ($5.75) is speckled with vanilla bean seeds, but jump at the chance to try a Sicilian cannoli ($5.75). Chef Carlo makes the cannoli shell dough, filling it with rich, creamy sheep's milk ricotta instead of the usual cow's milk. Both desserts are dolled up with brandy infused Florentine tuiles.
Service: The kind of pampering and personal attention doled out here makes me want to sign up for regular visits. I love the way they finalize meals with creamy homemade lemoncello frozen with whole lemons in ice blocks. I can't wait to go back.
Contact dining correspondent Judith Stocks at judithstocksreviews@yahoo.com