Davanti Enoteca: Believe the Buzz; It's Sensational

By Laura Hahnefeld Tue., Sep. 18 2012 at 9:00 AM

All photos by Laura Hahnefeld.

Get This: Polpo con Rafano

When a new spot opens in town, we can't wait to check it out -- and let you know our initial impressions, share a few photos, and dish about some menu items. First Taste, as the name implies, is not a full-blown review, but instead a peek inside restaurants that have just opened, sampling a few items, and satisfying curiosities (yours and ours).

Restaurant: Davanti Enoteca
Location: 6316 North Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale
Open: A little over a month.
Eats: Modern Italian
Price: Between $20 and $40 per person.

There are many times in life when the real thing doesn't live up to the buzz that preceded it (thank you very much, The Dark Knight Rises). This isn't the case with Davanti Enoteca. All the talk you may have heard is true. And I've got the photos and still-tingling taste buds to prove it.

Get This: Focaccia di Recco

Opened in early August in the former home of the Quilted Bear in Scottsdale, Davanti Enoteca is the newest home (and third location) of the Italian restaurant from Chicago-based Francesca's Restaurants Group (which also brought Mia Francesca to the Valley).

Headed up by chef Peter DeRuvo (formerly of Sassi, Prado, and Cuoco Pazzo), the menu is a large selection of sharable modern Italian fare. If you're unsure where to start, friendly and knowledgeable servers can assist, although I'm convinced there are few places, if any, where one can go wrong.

A must-try is the focaccia di recco with local honeycomb. At $18, its price may seem a bit startling, but, like most of the dishes here, worth every cent. The thin, baked bread is golden brown and bubbly, wonderfully crispy, and filled with lusciously soft cow cheese. And the accompanying melting honeycomb, meant to be spread on top, adds sweet to the savory. My server may have put it best when he said, "You're going to have fun eating this dish. It's already good, but the honeycomb triples the dish's flavor."

Hearts of palm with tomatoes and marinated lemon.

For vegetable lovers looking for a bit of garden gourmet, there are roasted hearts of palm ($12) whose cylindrical ivory tops tinged with brown look like the veggie version of a campfire marshmallow and whose taste is somewhere between artichokes and mushrooms. Served with grilled tomatoes barely able to hold back their juiciness, both vegetables are topped with lemon jam and razor-thin slices of marinated lemon, whose rinds add a perfect amount of bitterness to the tart in every bite.

Location Info

Venue

Map

Davanti Enoteca

6316 N. Scottsdale Rd, Paradise Valley, AZ

Category: Restaurant

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Tags:

Davanti Enoteca, Dave Johnson, Italian, Italian cuisine, Italian food, modern Italian, Peter DeRuvo, Scottsdale

We Recommend

myrirobles

The food wasn't good at all. The pasta I ordered tasted like pure butter, I had to take it back, they brought me another pasta and it didn'[t have any flavour at all, it was a completly rip off also, I ordered a crab and sea urchin pasta and the sea urchin was missing from the plate, the crab tasted from a can. When ordering bread only three pieces were at the table for a four people table. I wouldn't recommend this restaurant to anybody for italian dinning, the only thing that was good was their hamburger. If you really want to try a good italian restaurant go to the "Italian Restaurant" in Camelback, at least you pay for what you are eating.