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Spanish restaurant headed to Broadway (updated 4:50 p.m.)
Dave Zecchini, owner of DZ Restaurants, confirmed via a voice mail this afternoon that he plans to turn 384 Broadway into a Mediterranean bistro and tapas bar. (Credit goes to Saratoga Idiots for breaking this story last week)
The sale of the property is not yet final, a closing is scheduled next week. The building used to house Raina's boutique and Pizza on Broadway.
Table Hopping's Steve Barnes spoke to Zecchini who said he traveled to Spain last month for research (nice work if you can get it) and hopes to hire a chef from Spain.
This story was just updated:We'll hopefully have more on this later today, here's the story we've got right now.
Emily Donohue
Here's an update:
The new restaurant will be called Boca Bistro (boca is mouth in Spanish, ours are watering) and might be open as early as May.
Zecchini and his wife Roslyn, who is executive chef for Forno and Pasta Pane, went to Barcelona in part to "immerse themselves in the culinary culture, to truly bring the authenticity of the food and culure to the new restaurant,” Nancy Bambara, DZ Restaurants director of operations, told us.
The sale of the property is not yet final, a closing is scheduled next week. The building used to house Raina's boutique and Pizza on Broadway.
Table Hopping's Steve Barnes spoke to Zecchini who said he traveled to Spain last month for research (nice work if you can get it) and hopes to hire a chef from Spain.
This story was just updated:
Emily Donohue
Here's an update:
The new restaurant will be called Boca Bistro (boca is mouth in Spanish, ours are watering) and might be open as early as May.
Zecchini and his wife Roslyn, who is executive chef for Forno and Pasta Pane, went to Barcelona in part to "immerse themselves in the culinary culture, to truly bring the authenticity of the food and culure to the new restaurant,” Nancy Bambara, DZ Restaurants director of operations, told us.
posted by Saratogian Online at
2:52 PM
5 Comments:
Three stories today from the "You Idiots" blog postings. Looks like the Saratogian is expanding their horizons.
Hope his new restaurant fairs better than this review that has just been posted on "Albany Better Eats" :
uesday, January 24
Forno Bistro
Forno Bistro is an Italian-American restaurant in Saratoga Springs, NY. Don't go there hungry. The bar is nice, though. I'd go back for drinks at the bar.
They're a step up from Olive Garden and chain restaurants, but after my dinner tonight, I don't really see myself wanting to go back again. I went with a few other folks. The pleasant was that they split our checks without us asking. They added in an auto grat. The service wasn't terrible, but our server actively stayed away from our table and took a while to refill drinks - seemed more interested in padding the bill. One of our dining companions also had a food allergy, mentioned it to the server, and the dish came out with the problem food still on it. Who's expo-ing? They gave the diner a little bit of sorbet while waiting for the requested dish to come out, but our server pretty much disappeared after that. I'd just rather have a server interested in my dining experience instead of how much their 18% auto grat is going to be.
The server also pushed signing up for their free dining club card and mentioned we'd get 10% off of all of our bills that night. We didn't see anything off of our receipts when we paid, and when we asked out of curiosity the server mentioned that it was money that would go back on the dining card to be used as dining points at Forno at a later date. This was kind of annoying because being told we'd receive 10% off of our meals is way different than "10% of your meal is going to be added to this card that you can use eventually when you dine here and spend enough money". It's just a matter of goodwill - if your servers are telling diners one thing to get bonuses because they had people sign up for the dining card (I'm not sure if that's the case at Forno, but in many other models, this is commonplace), and diners find out what they were told wasn't exactly correct, it doesn't exactly leave a stellar impression of your business. Do you want people to leave thinking "Wow, that was a great night!" or "That was nice, but..."
Ok, so, on to food:
Bread - there was one slice of bread per diner. They have olive oil and vinegar at the table, which was tasty, but I could have used more bread. Further requests for bread were ignored.Which was kind of a bummer, because my main would have benefitted with some bread. The bread itself wasn't too bad. One of those par-cooked loaves that the kitchen finishes. In my FOH days, I quite enjoyed snacking on those types of bread.
I got an eggplant parm ($15). I like eggplant parmesan when I dine out because it is a royal pain to make at home - so much frying and THEN baking. The eggplant came in a rectangular dish (Il Forno has a fire oven they bake a lot of their food stuffs in). It was okay, but the eggplant parm I make at home is better. The eggplant slices were unbreaded and the whole dish was uniformly smooth and one texture. Mozzarella cheese, eggplant... it was all one mushy texture. I went to dinner hungry, and left not really full.
Albany John got a fra diavolo dish which was not at all spicy. It was okay as a pasta dish, but a few flakes of chili would have been nice. Something to add some heat to a diavolo dish.
I hope Pizza on Broadway finds a new location. It's liked by many families in Saratoga! A.
It's sad to see probably the best pizza place in town close, but it is good to see one of the most successful restaurant operators take over. Best of luck to them.
SO MUCH IN THE BIZ NEWS!! Wish I was there to get the scoop ... :( Miss you Saratoga!
Drove by Boca Bistro the other day. They went cheap on the sign in the front. Plus, friends of mine give the place lackluster reviews.
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