Review of Cafe Italiano in Englewood Cliffs

Located on 9W, just over the border of Fort Lee in Englewood Cliffs, Cafe Italiano is one of those neighborhood restaurants that always pleases. In my past life I reviewed restaurants and Cafe Italiano can stand up with the best of them. 


Through the years, Cafe Italiano has been the place I've hosted birthday parties, bridal showers, and baby showers. What I like most about it is that the interior space is small and intimate, and lined with windows that allow sunlight to pour through giving it a very Mediterranean feel. For history buffs, the restaurant was the summer house of Jimmy Walker, the mayor of New York City from 1926-1932.


Tonight our family gathered here for a birthday celebration for my mom. You have a choice of  sitting outdoors on their beautifully appointed patio, or indoors. Because the skies threatened rain, we dined indoors.  From the moment we entered the service was impeccable. We told the maitre de that it was my mom's birthday and they went overboard making sure that she was treated like a queen, complimenting her on every turn. 


Now, we had the kids with us and I have to say that the waitstaff was more than accomodating. They took great effort to make sure that the kids felt special. They delivered to my daughter a Shirley Temple in a "fancy" glass making her feel very grown up. And they made sure that very little time elapsed from the time that we ordered our drinks to the time that they were delivered. There's nothing worse than waiting more than five minutes for your drinks to arrive. When you host a dinner party at your house you don't keep your guests waiting for a drink, so why would you want to wait when you're paying?


A complimentary dish of bruschetta is served and the tomatoes were ripe, the onions fresh, and the olive oil of the highest quality. The bread in the basket arrived perfectly warmed and tasted freshly made, not soggy as some bread baskets can taste. For appetizers we ordered plates of oysters and mussels in white wine sauce. I am extremely particular about shellfish and the oysters were fresh and the mussels were tender and fragrant in a light white wine garlic sauce. It was so good that my picky nine-year-old ate the oysters and the mussels and announced them terrific! She has never eaten shellfish before, but said it all looked too good not to try.


All of our dinners were over the moon. I ordered the special, Tilapia Francese. A huge portion of fish arrived on my plate with fresh vegetables. The fish was flaky, moist and perfectly sauteed in butter, egg and lemon. My son ordered the fried calamari and I have to say, it was one of the best prepared calamari I've ever tasted. It would stand up to Rudy's in Cliffside Park and Garden Pizza in Fairview. My daughter had fussili with eggplant, zucchini and fresh mozzarella in a red sauce--OMG--to die for! My mom had linguine in clam sauce and it was loaded with fresh clams. It was the perfect balance of garlic and oil. And the clams were soooo fresh! My husband ordered veal wrapped in prosciutto in a brown sauce. I almost stole the plate from him--I never make veal at home and CI's veal is among the best I've ever tasted! My brother had chicken breast topped with mozzarella in a red sauce. I didn't get a chance to taste it because he pretty much inhaled it! He said it was out of this world.


We skipped dessert only because we had a cake waiting for us at home, but my daughter almost pushed the dessert cart out the door to bring home with us. 


So, in a nutshell, if you want a small, romantic restaurant in Bergen County with an Italian Meditteranean flare, try Cafe Italiano. It never gets old to me!

BIRTH OF A JOY-ZEE GIRL--PART ONE

I grew up on the Lower East Side.

          Of the Coytesville section of Fort Lee. Coytesville was like the gum on the bottom of Englewood Cliff’s shoe; the Hooterville to their Petticoat Junction. In its heyday, Coytesville’s saloons were like Korean nail salons—one on almost every sidewalk-less street corner. In 1965, I was brought home from Holy Name Hospital to a small house on a street with no name, just a number--5^th Street. To my right was Interstate Park; to my left was the road that led to Jim’s Candy Emporium where my life-long love affair with everything confectionary began.

My father was a union man, and in the ‘70’s union jobs were like Wonka’s golden ticket—the decade before Reagen sounded their death knell; the decade before debt was handed out like lollipops at the bank. Everyone’s dad was a union man—police, fire, postal, teacher, iron worker, teamster, laborer; and everyone seemed to make ends meet. Like most moms, my mom stayed at home; like most families, we had two used American cars parked in our tarred driveway (yes, tarred; pavers were men who paved streets and not decorative driveway bricks); a house with no mortgage; and a week down the Jersey Shore every summer. All accomplished on one paycheck.

          The door­way to my world opened onto Sixth Street Park. If I close my eyes I can still see the sharp prism of sunlight reflecting off the jalousie glass windows of our aluminum porch door distorting the colors of the brightly painted merry-go-round into kaleidoscopic blobs of yel­lows, reds, blues and greens.

Within the perimeter of the playground sat the shallow hole of the blue-painted kiddie pool lifeguarded each summer of my childhood by Fritz, the ageless ancient German immigrant who lived next door to the playground. I’m not sure how to describe Fritz except to say that he always looked constipated. All summer long Fritz would bullet German-infused commands at us kids from the perch of his sagging nylon-woven lawn chair atop the small grassy knoll above the pool. When he ejected you from the pool, you asked no questions—you goose-stepped to the bench and served out your sentence in silence.

Sitting faithfully beside Fritz was his brown and black German Shepherd who made Cujo look like Morris the Cat. The same commands Fritz shouted at his dog, he shouted at us. When he yelled, I never knew whether to sit, growl, or attack one of the Carney boys. I swear he had to have been a former Scoutmaster in the Hitler Youth. Somewhere there’s a book in me screaming to get out, “Fritz’s Guide to Childcare—Sitz! Platz! Halt die Klappe!” (Sit, Stay, Shut Your Mouth!)

When I was around five, the Kempf’s rented the old Sweeny house across the street. The Kempf’s were the Walton’s without a conscience; at least the boys were. They shaved cats with straight edged razor blades; hoisted them up trees in rusting crab nets; fed spoonfuls of dirt to unsuspecting neighborhood kids; even pushed a Volkswagon Bug down a ditch. My old man swore the Kempf’s were moved in as a way to force us to sell, but eventually they were the ones who left. Oddly, with them went the neighborhood.

The wrecking ball knew no rest back then. Turn-of-the-century houses were replaced by quadrangular brick McMansions; familiar names moved out; new architecture and cultures moved in. By the end of the decade the old neighborhood was well on its way to becoming unrecognizable, and so was I.

Everything changed the summer I turned 15. I bore within me a restlessness that I never felt before, and would never feel again in quite the same urgent way. All that mattered were my friends; being confined at home for any significant amount of time gave me a mental rash. When I wasn’t working, I was sitting on the cliffs of the Palisades imagining the life I would someday live on the sky-lined side of the Hudson.

On August 18^th, 1980, I wrote: “I can’t wait to be gone. Gone from this place; gone from this town where everyone knows everything about everyone. In this place nothing ever changes; people only die.”

To Be Continued…