On 5/14/2018 10:54 PM, Wayne.B wrote:
On Mon, 14 May 2018 22:08:59 -0400, wrote:
On Mon, 14 May 2018 18:35:44 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:
Not necessarily regional food but the area we wintered in in Florida
(Jupiter) was populated with many very good restaurants. Several
were owned and/or operated by people who previously had high end and
well known restaurants in New York City and other areas of the
country. When they retired to Florida they opened smaller versions
of their "up north" places and some were very, very good.
I ran into that, by accident, in Clearwater Beach. There is an Italian
restaurant right there where you come off the bridge on the south end
in a strip mall. They are transplanted New Yorkers and they brought
their recipe book ;-)
===
You don't have to go as far as Clearwater. There's an Italian
restaurant in Ft Myers called Cibo that rivals anything in NY.
There's a small Italian place called "Giuseppe's Italian Restaurant" on
Indiantown Rd. in Jupiter that we visited often. Family run, authentic
Italian cuisine and very reasonably priced.
Best experience we had at an Italian restaurant was in ... well, Italy.
I had a leave from the Navy and we packed up the little Fiat 850 Spyder
and took a road trip. We stopped for dinner at an inviting restaurant
that had a high stone wall with a permanently opened iron gate, both
covered with overgrown vines. Mrs.E. and I went in but discovered they
were not open yet and the Italian family than ran it (probably four
generations) were seated at a big table having their dinner. They gave
us a table anyway, explained they would serve us as soon as they
finished and gave us some wine and bread in the meantime. I watched
the head of household .... older Italian guy ... as he ate. In
Italian style, he had a big jug of wine that he'd lift onto his
shoulder, holding it in place with his finger in the jug's handle ring
and take a big swallow of the wine. Cracked me up because that's
exactly how Mrs.E's father used to drink wine when he was alive.
The pizza joints in Italy were very different than here in the states.
They were prepared with a minimal amount of cheese and lots of veggies,
etc. Then the pizza was doused with oil and put in a brick oven with
a wood fire. It was only cooked for about a minute, removed, folded
in half and held up for a few seconds to let the excess oil drip out.
Good stuff.