Firenze a Tavola

We chose to go to Firenze a Tavola, the restaurant downstairs in Parisi, for our 2nd meal of Denver Restaurant Week. We chose it because a) we could get a reservation, and b) we felt the kids would do okay there, since our sitters were all out of town.

The boys did great. We gave them hearty snacks before going, so that they weren't hungry and crabby and brought activities like Star Wars sticker books and Spiderman activity books. We were able to order them a margherita pizza to share (only $10). Unfortunately, even though they were extremely well-behaved, our waiter was gruff and seemed quite unhappy to have us there. I assume it was because of the kids. Whatever. He was the only real down side of the evening.

The meal was definitely not the "best of the best" of Restaurant Week like I read on another website, but it was good. The prix fixe menu was much more extensive than listed on the DRW website. Appetizers and desserts were for two to share, which meant we couldn't get as wide of a sampling of the food, but there were 5-7 choices for each and portions were absurdly large.

We started with the Cartoccio di Coccoli, a cone of fried pieces of pizza dough--like unsweetened doughnuts!--spreadable cheese and prosciutto. The dough was delicious, but the cheese was odd. It kind of tasted like Laughing Cow cheese. I had a scallop risotto, which was okay. The website mentioned above called it "the best ever" and I beg to differ. It was pretty good risotto and had 3 very small, but tasty scallops on it. B had the pumpkin ravioli, which was amazing. For dessert we shared a calzone filled with nutella, strawberries and bananas. It was ridiculously sized and tasty. It was enough to feed at least 4 adults and we took more than half home. I saw the tiramisu at another table and it was the size of a brick!

I'd like to go back and try upstairs Parisi sometime for pizza. Judging by the ginormous line, it must be quite good.