Critic's Review
On sort of a holiday Monday, I decided to take a drive up to Boca and check out this new Italian restaurant that replaced Legal Sea Foods in the Town Center Mall. The trip up was fast and uneventful, but once you get into the Town Center parking lot you'd better keep your eyes and ears open. Picture people who were bad drivers in their 30s driving big SUVs in their 80s, and you have quite a disaster.
The place looks very modern from the Mall; DaVinci's "other" restaurant is in Marco Island, so I doubt that many of us have been there.
I'm not sure about those 2 tables in the mall; there's nothing like people milling around you to view the menus while you're trying to enjoy a meal.
There was a sign in the mall with an arrow pointing to the place touting a $9 special, but no indication of what it was on the posted lunch menu. I was going in regardless.
I asked for a table and a very nice hostess led me to a very large booth in the bar area. The booth was for 6, and I felt like I was in the bar; so I asked for something on the other side.
I got a much more comfortable booth for 4 on the other side; there's a big fancy wall in the back of the restaurant. Earth tones and wood are the themes.
They've done a nice job remodeling this place; Legal Sea Foods was very old and outdated. This place seems like it would be pretty comfortable even when crowded.
I looked at the menu, looking for the special but no mention of it. A server sauntered over and asked to take my beverage order. "Iced Tea with extra lemon please". She came back with a water bottle and iced tea with no lemon.
I asked about the specials, and she rattled off Spaghetti Fra Diavolo and Bronzino, but no $9 special. "What's the $9 special?". "Oh", she said, "That's 1/2 panini and a cup of soup". Like pulling teeth finding out what it was, but I'm not eating bread so it wasn't for me. I ordered the Veal Piccata ($17) and a side ceasar salad (plus $5) and reminded her about the lemon. At first I though she either forgot again or didn't understand English, but then she came back with the lemon.
A runner put some bread on the table; fancy schmansy with mascarpone, a visually interesting olive oil with balsamic and caponata; since I don't like caponata, balsamic or mascarpone I wasn't too excited about it. Luckily I'm not eating bread. I tasted it with the olive oil and concluded that I wasn't missing much. The foccacia was an inch and a half thick, which was pretty unusual.
The salad came out seconds after the bread, so I wasn't tempted to have any more.
A nice salad with a good caesar dressing, but they failed at their attempt to shave the parmesan. First of all, shaved parmesan is useless on a salad, and second it's supposed to be razor thin. These were chunks of cheese; if I felt ambitious and had a sharp knife I might have tried to salvage it, but I ended up just pushing it aside with the croutons.
Italian music played at a low volume; "Dear Peter", "Volare" and a few others I didn't recognize. I think my server was spying on me as just when I finished the salad she brought out the main dish. The water was particularly bad; I'm not sure if it was straight tap water, but it had a chemical smell that isn't what you expect at a supposedly higher end restaurant.
Everything comes with potatoes, which is pretty unusual for an "authentic" Italian restaurant. The beans looked sad; I asked the runner to get me some butter which yielded me 3 frozen balls. The beans didn't seem fresh; I haven't been served beans like this in 20 years. The potatoes were like home fries with rosemary; The veal was disappointing in general. It's supposed to be dredged in flour and then cooked in olive oil but I doubt this was cooked in olive oil. The sauce was bland; a manager asked how everything was and I asked him for some more lemon; Piccata should be served with a lemon wedge. I used the butter and lemon to improve the sauce. It's a good thing I got the salad.
I gave my server the check sign and she came over to get my plate; my empty glass of tea didn't phase her one bit. A $3 iced tea should come with a refill.
Conclusion
My impression of this place is that they're not trying very hard to provide a good value; I shouldn't have to badger a server to find out the specials, and their lunch menu just isn't much of a value at all. Even the best restaurants give you a cup of soup or side salad with a $17 lunch entree. I felt like they didn't really want to have any specials, and that they cut corners on the veal dish while charging more than most NYC restaurants.
One dish doesn't make or break a restaurant, but the veal piccata I had at 