Italian restaurant Avanti takes a step forward with Fort Worth debut

May 9,2016

By Andrew Marton

The English translation of Avanti is “forward,” which is an apt exhortation for the aggressively pleasing approach in design and cuisine Avanti Fort Worth has made with its debut in Cowtown.

A mainstay of Dallas’ restaurant scene, first opening in 1989, Avanti has remained close to its Italian roots with its Fort Worth branch, opened in March.

It’s housed in the newly face-lifted and reimagined ground floor of One City Place (formerly the Tandy Center). A remarkably intimate, 2,100-square-foot space all done in shades of soothing taupe, the restaurant features buttery-leather banquettes surrounding polished oak tables, each decorated with a single flickering candle and a vase holding spring’s first tulips.

With interior ceilings soaring over 20 feet, Avanti Fort Worth’s space cultivates an almost chapellike sense of serene dining reverence.

Following the widely applicable sports adage that you don’t change a winning game plan, Avanti Fort Worth’s menu is almost a carbon-copy of the Dallas original’s, offering a generous 14 appetizers, six salads, eight pastas and 11 entrees. Appetizer prices top out at $14, and half of the mains hover between $35-$40 at dinner, so the onus is on executive chef Mario Sanchez to produce flawless execution, with occasional moments of transcendent taste.

And that’s precisely what you get, starting with something as simple as the house garlic loaf ($3), an upgrade on the prosaic garlic-bread basket. But in Avanti’s skilled hands, the narrow bread slices are subtly lacquered with a winning balance of garlic, butter, olive oil and bits of basil (no banal parsley here) and a flurry of grated 12-month-old Parmesan cheese.

Carpaccio can act as one of those valuable measuring sticks for any genuine Italian restaurant. And Avanti’s scallop version ($11) made for one of the meal’s standouts. Razor-thin, translucent slices of scallop line the bottom of a white dish, their freshness brightened by the use of potent bird’s-eye chiles along with orange zest.

Pasta is another vital index of Italian culinary quality, and Avanti’s gnocchi arrabbiata ($9) conjured up the tastiest edible pillow. The obvious description of gnocchi as “pillowy” was, in Avanti’s case, justified — but thankfully it played well with its “angry,” or arrabbiata, sauce of crushed tomatoes streaked with red chile flakes.

And no Italian restaurant can escape the ultimate judgment of how it executes a classic calamari fritti ($9). A greaseless bit of fried squid should never be taken for granted, and Avanti’s version was liberated from any straitjacket of oil-soaked breading. Instead, the pieces wore a light coating of flour, along with a spice blend. And with a spritz of charred lemon and a quick dip into a tangy tomato-basil sauce, this calamari ascended to a high level of fried-squid nirvana.

Farfalle carbonara ($19), or bow-tie pasta, was a well-executed vehicle for a blend of misleadingly simple yet harmonious ingredients: nicely rendered prosciutto di Parma, Parmesan cheese, garlic, scallions and glugs of heavy cream. As with so many of Avanti’s preparations, the kitchen avoided a bullying hand with its saucing — preferring napping to drowning.

Any Italian dish that carries the regal name of Milan has much to live up to, and the bone-in veal Milanese, at $36, certainly set the bar high. And it mostly delivered, with the meat spreading out like a breaded Chinese fan. Its outer coating could have been crispier, but the meat was sufficiently moist and the kitchen was smart to tart up the dish with shreds of peppery arugula, creamy mozzarella slices and zippy cherry tomatoes.

Though the grilled lamb chops bear the same sticker price as the veal Milanese, their similarities end there. The lamb chops delivered a taste salvation experience worthy of a Sunday sermon. These double chops were cooked perfectly, with their roseate, juicy center leading to a bronzed char on the surface. But it was their jacket of a balsamic glaze — a minor miracle of “agrodolce” (sour-sweet) brilliance tinged with rosemary — that elevated the lamb to the night’s most memorable dish.

Naturally, a “classic” Italian meal is obligated to crescendo with a square of tiramisu, and Avanti’s $8 version was perfectly fine.

But take a walk on the decadent side with its wedge of the peanut butter-chocolate pie ($8). A love child of a steroidal Reese’s peanut butter cup and semi-bitter chocolate mousse, this pie’s secret ingredient was a crust made of pulverized pretzels whose salt only accentuated the peanut butter and chocolate components.

To be sure, none of Avanti Fort Worth’s ambitious quality — starting with its solicitous, polished service that never lets a water glass run dry, and keeps the meal purring along at a civilized pace — came at a cut rate. (A smaller lunch menu is more moderately priced, but lacks some of dinner’s best dishes.)

But, so far anyway, Avanti is making the case that its brand of unapologetically refined and accomplished cooking is worth the money to enjoy the abundant charms of downtown’s latest “destination” restaurant.