Florencia’s
3017 University Ave. (North Park)
619-325-5805
Prices: Salads and appetizers, $3.99 to $11.99; pasta, pizza and entrees, $10.50 to $21.95; lunch specials, $5.50
By Frank Sabatini Jr. | Restaurant Review
Italian cuisine has become rather sophisticated over the last two decades. Rarely before would you find a bottle of Chianti sharing table space with lobster ravioli or arugula-covered pizzas, at least not in the mom-and-pop kitchens that are mainstays in most American neighborhoods. Yet when the hankering strikes for a humble dish of spaghetti and meatballs or oozy manicotti, coupled with buttery garlic bread, we narrow our searches to places like Florencia’s.
Setting out to eat within the hang of lunch and dinner, my friend was equally intent on finding the kind of saucy, old-school Italian food he grew up with in New Jersey and that I savored on Sundays at my grandmother’s house in Buffalo, N.Y. Lucky for us, we arrived at Florencia’s shortly before 4 p.m., at which point the extraordinarily cheap daily lunch specials end.
You’ll be hard pressed to find any place else in town selling 10-inch pizzas with two toppings for only $5.50. Things like lasagna, ravioli and spaghetti are also the same price during lunch, and served with jumbo slices of toasted garlic bread.
At about 16 years old, the restaurant reveals its age with faded frescos adorning the entranceway and red pleather booths ripped in a few spots. A series of ornately framed porcelain relief plaques positioned along a main wall appear oddly precious, and further confirming that a big pot of homemade red sauce is simmering in the back before you can even smell it.
We ordered mostly from the lunch card, starting with a pepperoni-mushroom pizza sporting a medium-thick crust that seems on the verge of extinction in the face of today’s ubiquitous thin-crust pies. The sauce was bright and fresh, and the mozzarella was applied judiciously, much like Italians from a couple generations ago preferred.
I craved plain ole spaghetti with meat sauce, adding two fairly large meatballs to the dish for an extra $4. Still, the meal with garlic bread came to just under $10. The portion was doggie bag worthy while the sauce tasted soft around with edges, striking mildly sweet notes and the right level of acidity.
The meatballs also passed a very specific test I give them everywhere, in which they’re made with finely ground beef that isn’t overly salted while containing enough breadcrumbs in the mix so that they soften evenly during the cooking process. These weren’t my grandmother’s, but they were pleasingly close.
More impressive was a pair of homemade sausage links that my friend ordered with his hand-stuffed manicotti from the regular menu.
“This is what I expect Italian sausage to taste like,” he said, comparing it to the sausage he savored in Jersey at a shop owned by his friend’s father.
The links were lean and tender and loaded with sweet fennel, as they should be. As for the manicotti, they were generously stuffed with creamy parsley-specked ricotta and served with a side of spaghetti.
One of the big sellers on the regular appetizer menu is Alfredo breadsticks, priced at $8.99. Curiously, they cost $5 more than a side of meatballs or sausage. Our waiter, a young and personable Albanian related to the owners, hinted that the sticks are big and labor-intensive, filled lusciously with the famous Parmesan-based cheese sauce. I’d be willing to give them a try after closing down a nearby bar, given that the restaurant stays open until 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
In addition to pastas, Florencia’s dinner menu flaunts a bevy of other classics such as chicken picatta, eggplant or veal Parmesan, shrimp scampi and cannoli or tiramisu for dessert. With a few spots of tomato sauce soiling my notes and nostalgic flavors lingering on our tongues, we got exactly what we wanted.
