For some 20 years, Chef Angelo Romano, Restaurateur and Owner of Paradiso Ristorante has delighted food connoisseurs in Central Palm Beach County with authentic, Old World Italian cuisine, classic hospitality, and an exceptional wine list. Angelo accumulated and honed his culinary skills by working in a wide range of luxurious resort towns including the Italian Riviera, the famed island of Capri, Anacapri (a resort town on Capri), the island of Bermuda and locally in Palm Beach. Angelo’s excellent cuisine is influenced by his upbringing in the Massa Lubrense area of the Sorrentine peninsula (Penisola Sorrentina), near Sorrento, located between Naples and the Amalfi Coast/Positano, home to rich volcanic soil (think perfect San Marzano tomatoes), fresh buffalo mozzarella, luscious lemon groves, indigenous wines (think mineral-flavored whites and reds with names like Aglianico and Greco di Tufo), and an incredible array of fresh seafood at your fingertips from pristine local waters. Are you hungry yet? Good! Do you want to go and visit the Naples-Sorrento-Amalfi Coast area (and Capri)–you should! But if a trip to Italy is not on the immediate horizon (and even if it is), you can still enjoy the authentic flavors of classic Neapolitan cuisine as you would expect to find in places like Capri and Sorrento right in Lake Worth!
Living in Palm Beach County part-time for over 10 years, I am quite fond of the dining scene. We have many wonderful restaurants, and more new ones open constantly to feed our ever-growing, and ever-more sophisticated clientele (many of whom visit, winter, or move down from places like New York City, so we are a spoiled bunch), but even growing up in New York, spending a lot of time in the city, and visiting Italy frequently over the years, I am pleased with what our local restaurants and chefs are doing in Palm Beach County and South Florida. Would I like to see Eataly open in Miami (or better yet even closer–sure, but I’ll save that for another post– are you listening Mario Batali?) Anyway, the reason I talk so much about the food scene in our area in general is we have several “hot pockets,” if you will, “culinary clusters” for excellent dining, including Delray (Atlantic Avenue more specifically), Boca (down east especially and by Town Center, Palm Beach (of course), and now the PGA/Gardens area is growing up and has its own restaurant row. With all this going on and all this buzzing around our busy roads like 95 and the Turnpike to dart from one great meal in South County to the next on “the Island” or in Gardens, downtown Lake Worth is a place that I apologize for overlooking all these years. I’ve heard a lot of good things from friends and colleagues about Paradiso, but just never got myself to dine in downtown Lake Worth.
The other day I had an appointment nearby, and a couple hours free for lunch (I like to sometimes lunch as they do in “Dolce Vita” hungry Italy, where locals enjoy a leisurely two hour lunch between 1 and 3pm, and take a passeggiata, then a nap, and on these days typically eat very light in the evening). Sounds like a plan. Lake Worth here we come! Upon stepping inside Paradiso, you forget you are in Lake Worth, not that the downtown isn’t charming–it is–and has a lot of potential. Seeing lots of new apartments and town homes going up in areas that a few years ago seemed forgotten (last time I was downtown Lake Worth was running through as a participant in the Palm Beach Marathon in 2011), it was nice to see things were looking up.
Back to Paradiso. Angelo, the renowned Chef/Owner personally greeted us like long-lost famiglia (I did not call for a reservation, nor tell him anything about what I do until we were comfortably seated and sipping a nicely chilled pinot grigio from the Veneto, Italy–in a perfect, elegant wine glass, and being teased by the aromas from the hot bread that clearly was baked at the restaurant and was just brought out from the oven, as if Angelo had some kind of intuition that we’d be coming, and we’d be hungry!)
I also appreciate that our server helped select a really excellent wine by the glass from a wine list that could have taken me several hours to enjoy perusing. I did enjoy looking, and was very impressed with the depth and breadth of Angelo’s collection, and it was obvious on first sip that his entire wine program was “top notch,” judging by the elegant glass, perfect temperature, and excellent selection for a decent price we were offered from a list that contained many superb vintages and corresponding prices, much as one would expect to find in Palm Beach, perhaps not Lake Worth.
What do you suggest is good I asked Angelo, thinking he would zero in to help us decide from a menu that had so many choices that all sounded good. “Everything, tutti,” he said proudly. He obviously is very passionate about his cuisine and his customers, and goes back and forth between the kitchen cooking and socializing with his guests, making sure everything is “just right.” Through his experiences he learned to “appeal to the most finicky of palates and please the fancies of local and visiting diners venturing out to taste something extraordinary.”
Chef Angelo’s culinary roots trace back to his early childhood, as he was born into a family of Italian olive oil and wine producers. His background has influenced Angelo’s desire to include only the freshest ingredients in his menu selections. He was only fourteen years old when he was chosen for a summer job at the restaurant Faraglioni, located on Capri, the island know for its mouthwatering Mediterranean cuisine, and one of my favorite places to visit in the entire world because of its beauty, elegance, and outstanding cuisine (and many great places to take a leisurely, or rigorous passeggiata up and down countless stairs or steep hills to beautiful landmarks like the Villa Jovis, an Augustan age villa, or the famed “Faraglioni walk,” about 700 stairs both up and down to walk past the amazing formation of three large rocks the island is famous for, and past the “Arco Naturale” or Natural Arch, another ancient rock formation extending into the shimmering azure waters below. In the most magical of places, Capri is where Angelo learned the tricks of the trade and went on to learn more from the best chefs of Northern Italy, France and Switzerland before heading to Bermuda and on to Palm Beach.
Angelo’s passion and enthusiasm for his restaurants and Italian cuisine have earned him a superlative reputation in an industry that is notoriously fickle in its tastes. “The first thought I have in the morning is about how I am going to make my restaurant better,” says Chef Angelo. I love the enthusiasm, and too agree in both business and personal affairs, the day we stop learning and striving to be even better is the day we’re no longer living. It is a great philosophy, and Angelo’s experience and passion are evident in every bite. For a restaurant to remain open and consistently excellent for 20 years says a lot.
Down to the food–we were treated to a mixed Antipasto plate (small tasting portions, which I appreciated so I could try more without overdoing it), which featured his famous stuffed Zucchini Flowers (a day in the Naples area of Italy without Zucchini Flowers is just not a day at all–they are practically indispensable in their diet–and they even grow them in hot houses during cooler weather, because the people cannot do without them!) Angelo fills his with a mixture of ricotta, mozzarella, shrimp, and diced zucchini. The seafood aspect definitely reminded me of some meals on Capri, an island surrounded by abundant amazing seafood, where typically the flowers are filled with mozzarella (or ricotta and perhaps an anchovy filet), Caprese cuisine loves to show off their abundance of incredibly fresh seafood! (You got it, why not flaunt it or at least enjoy?)
The Octopus was tender and served atop lemony arugula (yum), and the Salmon Tartare with diced Granny Smith Apples and fresh lime was a nice change from typical “crudo” or raw seafood dishes- the apple influence called to mind northeastern Italy, namely Friuli, where apples are prevalent–coupled with the tangy lime, the salmon literally danced in our mouths.
For pastas, since we wanted to try a few (but just a bite of each), Angelo said “don’t worry, leave it to me–I’ll make you a ‘Tris’,” which is a popular way Italians sample three different pastas (in Rome I have a hard time deciding between Amatriciana, Carbonara, Cacio e Pepe, and alla Gricia, so a perfect forkful of three of them would be musica to my bocca!)
Angelo brought out a house made raviolo with a luscious tomato basil sauce, filled with smoked provola cheese, common in Neapolitan cuisine, Tortelloni filled with veal in a rich veal/veal stock sauce, and a creamy risotto adorned with crispy sautéed baby asparagus. We tried the Branzino with pistachio crust (Sicilian pistachios from Bronte), amazingly fresh, moist fish with delicious crumbled and toasted pistachios that added to the dish and were not overpowering, atop braised escarole and sautéed fennel, two of my favorite Italian vegetables. Healthy and delicious Mediterranean cuisine at its best!
Since this was Paradiso (Paradise) after all, we felt dessert (at least a taste) wouldn’t win us any disfavor with the powers that be, so again we deferred to Angelo, and cautioned, “not too much, just a taste!” Angelo pleased our palates once again with two “tastes” a sinfully good Italian-style mascarpone cheesecake with strawberries, and a pistachio cake with house made pistachio gelato, topped with pistachio mousse. After tasting both, unable to decide which would be better for my last meal on earth or first meal at Paradiso (or in Heaven), my dining companion and I both concluded on our first visit to Paradiso the answer would be both! “Tutti i due!” was the response when Angelo asked which we preferred.
Angelo visiting his hometown near Sorrento.
Paradiso is a gem, and Angelo adds an important, vibrant, authentic “Old World” Neapolitan touch to the cuisine in our area. Angelo hosts many wine dinners, as well as a “white truffle” dinner in the fall. Another Angelo favorite we did not try is his Neapolitan style “Caciotta” or “basket cheese” ricotta. Watch Angelo make it on his blog by clicking here.
the Caciotta cheese
Pictured above: a sample wine dinner/white truffle tasting menu from 2013.
Paradiso serves lunch Monday-Friday and features a very popular 3-course Prix Fixe for $23! We not only enjoyed the cuisine, wine program, and hospitality, it was nice to see Angelo visiting with his guests. We started talking with the people at the next table who had been regulars at Paradiso for 20 years and said “this is the place. “We love it here. We used to go to Palm Beach all the time, but this is THE spot in Lake Worth, it is always great.” Nothing like an endorsement from long-time loyal regulars, which I now expect I will become. See you in Lake Worth, and please tell Angelo I sent you and Buon’ Appetito!
Paradiso
625 Lucerne Ave.
Lake Worth, Florida 33460
561.547.2500
