California Vegetarian

Naples is the second review on this site for a restaurant in the Patina Group—our first review was for Catal.

A vegetarian certainly will not go hungry here.  And from what we have seen, your omnivorous family and friends will be happy, too. George and I have been to Naples several times over the last few years, and we have generally been happy with the food and the service.  Normally, we order one or two of their pizzas and remember really being in the city of Naples and eating the best pizza we have ever had—it was at a train station, no less.  This time, we opted for pasta instead.  Honestly, I was a tiny bit disappointed.  Still, I think the meal was good, and the service was still excellent.

The problem with our Ravioli di Vegetali (ravioli stuffed with garden vegetables and ricotta cheese served over a light tomato-basil broth) was that the pasta was a bit chewy.  I know, I could have sent it back, but I hate being wasteful, and the broth that it was served in was excellent.  So, I chose to keep it.  The ravioli was $17.95.

We’d decided that we wanted a lighter meal, so, we did not purchase a salad or an appetizer this time.  But we still bought a bottle of wine and dessert.  We chose a Zaca Mesa Syrah.  The wine was very nice, off an excellent wine list.  

For dessert, we had a trio of mini ice-cream sandwiches (Tramezzino Gelato).  Honestly, this may have been the best dessert I have had in a while.  The first sandwich was peanut butter cookies with chocolate gelato.  The second was chocolate cookies with vanilla gelato.  The third was pistachio chocolate chip cookies with spumoni gelato.  The flavors and the portions were simply perfect. At $8.25, it was a steal!

One last comment on the service… our server, Ioan, was excellent.  He attended to us as if we were spending thousands of dollars.  He was informative and kind.  We enjoyed most his knowledge of the wine list and his story about the Hermitage wines of France.  We actually had this meal before the Napa Rose meal that is reviewed below.  It was Ioan’s story that encouraged us to try the Hermitage at the Napa Rose.