By Samantha Taylor
One thing I love about doing these reviews is experiencing the local family restaurants that have that real warm feeling of home. The next place I visited was a long-standing family Italian restaurant in Lutz on 102 Flagship Drive, known as ‘Villaggio.’
I was presently surprised by the owner and chef, Giuseppe Mascali, as I enjoyed talking to him and I learned a lot. He taught me about how in Italy, eating is a time to bond — sitting around the table and talking.
In their culture, eating is about the family experience, not just consuming food. You could tell that is very important to him and we talked about how it’s so different in America. Here we eat so fast and many families don’t even have dinner together anymore.
And even though many Italian meals include white bread and pasta, Italians, as a nation, are not near as overweight as Americans. I think Giuseppe is onto something, and it’s one reason why Americans are one of the most overweight countries in the world, tipping the scales at 74 percent of Americans being overweight.
We both agreed, one difference is Americans typically eat so fast and don’t know how to really enjoy their food. We both laughed when I asked him if he made up all these recipes. His response was, “I am Italian; I don’ta needa recipes!”
He also mentioned how they have a woman that plays the harp Thursday through Sunday night and he smiled, as he said in his strong Italian dialect, “Music is gooda for the soul and it’s relaxing to listena to the harp. You don’ta wanta rush when you eat; relaxa, enjoya the time with family!”
OK, so back to my meal. Of course, as with all Italian restaurants, they have the tempting basket of bread they bring to the table. I would ask your server right when you order your drinks not to bring it.
Since I practice portion control and usually take a good amount of the dinner home, I started off with their portobello anti-pasto (appetizer). It is grilled heart of the mushroom in a garlic lemon sauce over mixed greens.
As always, I asked them to go light on the oil and it’s really better to get all oil or sauces on the side so you can control how much of it goes on. It was very delicious and the sauce was pretty lite.
Then I got the chicken Marsala, which is normally one of the lower calorie options in an Italian restaurant. Make sure anytime you order chicken Marsala, you ask for the chicken to be grilled and to leave off the breading.
I substituted the white pasta for a side of steamed asparagus with no added butter on top of it. Make sure when you order veggies out, you tell the server this because when I used to wait tables, I found that many restaurants added at least 30 grams of fat with adding butter on top of the vegetables — turning a healthy thing not so healthy!
Another meal the owner pointed out is the linguine crab trecolori, which is jumbo lump crabmeat sautéed with fresh broccoli, vine ripe tomatoes and linguine in a savory seafood broth that is low fat.
On this, I would modify and leave off the pasta and have them pour the crabmeat right on top of the broccoli. And anytime something says ‘sautéed,’ you can be sure that means ‘butter,’ so instruct them to use a very light amount.
One more really awesome thing about this restaurant is they have a great meeting room in the back — a wine cellar, ‘The Cork Room,’ that seats 20 people around a large wood table. Awesome place! Buon appetito!
