Tips for Maximizing You’re Dining Experiences in an Italian Restaurant

When Kevin and Stacey Jennings founded The Urban Food Group in 1998, their aim was to create specialty urban restaurants offering excellent quality food and superior value. With Frazier’s, Porter’s City Tavern, Vivace, and Coquette, the Urban Food Group already stellar list of stylish dining options in Raleigh, which they have now expanded to Charlotte with the recently opened Vivace. Apart from the breathtaking modern venue, the newly opened Vivace offers the best of traditional Italian cuisine. Using the freshest ingredients and seasonal produce, Executive Chef Jeremy Sabo and Chef de Cuisine Andrew Schaumann, who has been Sous Chef at Vivace in Raleigh since 2007, have developed the creative Italian menu. On offer is a seasonal trattoria menu with dishes that are sophisticated yet simple. The restaurant offers prefix menus specially created for every occasion. Choose from a wide selection of antipasti, house-cured meats and cheeses, homemade pastas, wood-fired entrees and divine desserts to make your event unforgettable. Vivace understands that Italians take their food very seriously and makes every effort to bring the best of Italian cuisine to savvy diners in Charlotte.

But for many, a traditional Italian meal can be slightly confusing. After all, there are usually numerous courses each with a specific order of appearance and a wide selection of wines and aperitifs to enjoy. Understanding how Italians eat will definitely help you make the most of the feast that lies ahead of you.

A traditional Italian menu normally has five courses lasting a minimum of two hours. At the outset, you can choose from a selection of aperitifs or drinks that will tease your palate for the meal to come. At Vivace, you are spoilt for choice with a 500-bottle selection of Italian wines and other cocktails. Up next is the antipasti or appetizer course. These are bite-sized portions of sliced cured meats, local cheeses and even olives or pickled vegetables. Primi, or the first course, follows with a range of options from pasta, soup or risotto. The second, or main course, normally consists of fish, meat or poultry. You could enjoy these along with a seasonal salad as well. Vivace prides itself on its extensive vegetarian menu with meat-free main courses and a selection of artisanal cheeses and wood- oven pizzas. To end the meal, you will round things off with a selection of dolce. These desserts range from fruit, cheese, and the more indulgent cream-based or chocolate desserts. No meal in Italy is complete without a digestif or after-dinner drink, so make sure you save room. During the meal, most Italians drink wine or mineral water, beer is rarely served, and coffee does not arrive until after the meal. These simple guidelines on what to expect from a traditional Italian restaurant should help you make the most of your dining experience. At the end of the day in Italy, food is a labor of love, and in Vivace, as in Italy, each meal is a celebration… so dig right in.

Homemade Restaurant Pizza in Charlotte

What started off as a simple peasant dish is now an international favorite. The history of pizzas can be traced back to Roman times where it originated as a flatbread topped with olive oil and herbs. As new ingredients such as mozzarella and tomatoes were introduced, the pizza started to take on the shape and taste that we so love today. In America however, what passes off as pizza can be categorized in two types - the cheesy deep pan variety and the crusty thin version. True Italian pizza on the other hand is a whole different dish entirely. Italians pride themselves on their traditional pizza recipe where the dough is light and crisp, and the toppings a simple combination of fresh produce and aromatic herbs all bathed in a tangy tomato sauce and sprinkled with only the best buffalo mozzarella cheese. Italians claim that once you have tasted the original, you will never feel the same about pizza again!

As pizzas gained popularity in Italy, shops began to spring up creating pizzas with customized toppings. The famous Neapolitan style pizza quickly spread throughout the country and soon each region began developing their own local versions based on the freshest of ingredients available. Certain pizzas became menu staples including the classic Pizza Margherita,a simple tomato sauce with torn basil and cheese, the Pizza Marinara which has loads of garlic along with anchovies and oregano, the Pizza Capricciosa(mushrooms, olives, prosciutto and boiled egg), Pizza Pugliese (capers and olives) and Pizza Veronese with mushrooms and prosciutto. As you can see, each region adapted to the locally available ingredients in order to customize the freshest pizzas. Apart from the regional varieties, several pizza styles developed that became popular all over Italy. Even today, authentic Italian restaurants and pizzerias offer Pizza Quattro Formagi that uses four different types of local cheeses such as mozzarella, gorgonzola, ricotta and parmesan. Pizza Liguria is a novel take on a traditional recipe that uses basil pesto and no tomato sauce at all. Modern Italian restaurants now create a fusion of the old and the new when it comes to pizza, and many adventurous chefs revel in experimenting with new tastes and flavors to revamp an old favorite. No matter how unusual the combination, the results are always delicious.

When ordering pizza in an authentic Italian restaurant, remember that portions are usually individually sized. It is recommended that each diner order his or her own personal pizza. Unlike what passes off as pizza in the U.S., authentic Italian pizza has a thin crusty dough with a layer of rich tomato sauce and mozzarella. A traditional pizza is always made in a special wood-fire brick oven, which creates a crisp and light crust, never oily or heavy. In fact, Neapolitan wood fired pizzas are now regarded as the benchmark for pizzas all over the world. They stand for century-old traditions when it comes to making pizzas and are served at all authentic Italian pizzerias

When the Urban Food Group opened its latest Italian restaurant - Vivace in November 2009, proprietors, Stacey and Kevin Jennings successfully brought a little piece of Italy into Charlotte. A stylish Italian trattoria offering authentic Italian cuisine, Vivace boasts of a traditional Tuscan menu with seasonal specialties, an extensive house-cured meat and cheese selection, a fully stocked wine cellar, and most importantly the best classic thin crust pizzas on the East Coast. You can choose from classic favorites such as Margherita or Quattro Formaggi, to more experimental toppings such as salty egg or smoked chicken and artichokes. All made in a wood fired oven, these rustic ten-inch delights promise to change the way you look at pizza for good!