Executive Chef Service & Solutions

    6/1/2008 review by Chef Vincenzo Esposito

Simply Traditional Italian

Antonio’s isn’t especially glamorous or inventive. This is precisely the beauty of it.

People like me, who spend my whole life in the kitchen cooking for others. NOW gating the opportunity to going out and Enjoy other great Chefs Cuisine and haunting vast, baroque dining establishments, puzzling over crowded, multi page menus and gorging (or trying not to gorge) on remorselessly similar variations of foie gras or molten-chocolate cake, often dream of escaping to a certain kind of restaurant. This imaginary restaurant is a neighborly place, tucked on an out-of-the-way street, where waiters aren’t excessively fawning and the prices aren’t excessively high. The room is big enough not to be poky, but not so big that you have to shout to be heard. There are no trendy circular lampshades hanging from the ceiling, no freakishly large flower arrangements sprouting to the sky. There is a bar to dine at, finding some of the best wines from Italy that won't break your wallet. The food is various but not busy, and prepared in a way that highlights the ingredients instead of the vaunted skills of an egotistical chef. It’s a restaurant, in other words, where one would be happy to dine on an off night, on his own nickel, when it wasn’t his dubious professional duty to devour everything in sight.

ANTONIO’S RISTORANTE

371 Franklin ave

Belleville, NJ

(973)751-7001

Antonio's, which is been operating from the 60's serving a multitude of patrons. Located in Plaza Chopping Center in the corner of Franklin Ave. and Joralemon St. in Belleville, N.J. The modest little Italian restaurant occupies nicely homey atmosphere setting rooms, with a bar in the back for eating and. The proprietor, Antonio Iovino, is well known from the 60's wan him and is brother in low opened the Butcher Shop in the same Mall "Iovino & Esposito Meats and Deli” Serving the towns around with Quality Meats and Imported Italian Specialty from all regions of Italy. Still to this day using the best for his patron’s costumers. If all this sounds a little precious, well, that’s because it is. Unlike at some of the city’s other high-minded, ingredient-conscious foodie palaces, however, the menu here is presented casually, within the context of a familiar culinary tradition, and it’s relatively cheap. It’s the kind of straightforward, unfussy food that would send to think you are in Italy feasting in one of the Mama & Papa Trattoria, say. From The hot antipasto to the home made Ricotta pie, also are toasty breads and personal Pizza Napoletana Cooked in a Wood Brick oven from Italy with fresh tomato and fresh home made mozzarella. Before the heftier courses arrive, it’s also possible to indulge in a good, milky buffalo mozzarella tangled with prosciutto, and a variety of chaste vegetable dishes designed, in high Greenmarket fashion, to be admired as much for their beauty as for their taste. I sampled a decent salad made with perfectly spiky wild arugula leaves. Unlike with the majority of brawny, overstuffed Italian restaurants these days, the reesqueset Home made pasta dishes on the menu at Antonio's, and four secondi courses, and they are more or less interchangeable as main courses. All the pastas I sampled were good, especially my fevered Gnocchi with an authentically beefy Bolognese ragù. Among the secondi, also one of my fevered went is offered in the weekly specials the aged New York Sirloin steak Fiorentina cooked to perfection topped with wild mushrooms. Veal Marsala and many other traditionally dishes like my mother used to cook. some dessert are Home Made and some are imported from Italy.

The thing I like the most is also Live entertainment on the weekend with AngeloVaglio one of the legends in Italian entertainment.

The prices are Moderate and fair, reservation is not necessary but recommended. The entire staff at Antonio's will make you feel at home.

I will give Antonio's ****stars for his Traditionalism, Quality Service and Atmosphere.

Buon Appetito!!!

Sincerely yours

Chef Vincenzo Esposito

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