Critic's Review
Review 7/13/21
Angelo Elia and his investors have opened another restaurant in Fort Lauderdale. This one is a bakery specializing in fancy sandwiches.
The first thing I noticed is that they open at 7am, but that they don't really serve breakfast. They have Croissants and a couple of pastries; so I decided to come in for lunch.
They have a very strange (and bad) driveway here; their lot on the side leads you into the back of the cafe. A pretty nice place, considering what was here before. The Jib Room was really bad, and Le Chef just looked like a room with some tables. This place looks like a modern coffee cafe, which is basically what it is.
You order at the register and they give you a number to put on the table. Good for me; no tipping. They supposedly have the sandwiches on the menu in a display; they were bigger than I thought they would be. The girl assured me that the Croissant "Frittata" had slices of meat on it (rather than just scraps in the frittata), so I ordered that. You pay, grab your number and you wait. I noticed that a bottle of water was $3. Great.
As I'm sitting there I'm wondering why they didn't give me the water. I went back up to the counter, but it was no use. I figured I'd wait for it.
They've got a little bar with some TVs; I can't see coming here for a beer though. Wine and a Croissant? Maybe.
I wondered about the music; a lot of old farts in the place and Janet Jackson was playing. Then some Italian music and Lauryn Hill. All over the place.
A lady brings over my sandwich; the girl suggested that they press it because otherwise it's cold. I'm not used to char marks on a croissant.
The sandwich wasn't nearly as well stuffed as the one on the display. This is closer to what I expected from an Angelo Elia restaurant. A little slice of meat. The ones in the display are for marketing purposes only.
She didn't have my drink. "I ordered a water", I told her. She heads over to the bar and I see her pour me water from a pitcher. She brings it over. "I hope I didn't pay $3 for that", I quipped. Oh, you got a bottle.
Fancy water. Tastes like water. A waste of $3.
The first week they're open you get to see the owner; Elia was in the store. Here they went outside to discuss the dangerous driveway entrance. The side of the cement wall has all kinds of paint on it from cars banging into it. If you have a big car there's a good chance you'll leave here with damage. It looked like Elia was aware of it and was indicating that it needed to be widened. In the meantime be careful, particularly at night.
As for the sandwich, this place suffers from the same problem that I have with his pizza places; the food isn't freshly prepared and it's just not as good as it could be. A cold omelet on a cold croissant that's slightly warmed with a too-hot press (a press shouldn't blacken a sandwich).
The Croissant was nice and buttery, but nobody wants to eat cold eggs. It reminded me of an egg McMuffin. Better than an egg McMuffin, but at McDs at least the egg is hot and the cheese melts.
Conclusion
Fancy Italian pizza and sandwiches don't really interest me; paying $7 for tuna fish on white bread or $6.50 for a slice of Sicilian pizza isn't something I'm going to do. Expensive coffee that you can get everywhere. A cute little place that's better than what was here before, so you have to call it progress. If they added some more interesting breakfast items the place would be more appealing; fancy Italian sandwiches that are pre-cooked several hours earlier isn't going to get me in here again.