Food: Fiore Restaurant

Fiore Restaurant

284 Grand Street
Williamsburg, NY 11211
718-782-8222

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I read a review of Fiore on Serious Eats so the Monkey and I decided to go and check it out for lunch.

The restaurant's really beautiful. Very high ceilings and very spacious.

We started with the Calamaretti fritti con zucchine croccanti Fried calamaretti with crispy zucchini.

It was pretty good. Very lightly battered and the zucchini added a nice change of pace in terms of taste and texture.

I got the Pízza fíore with "Lardo di colonata" and shaved parmesan.

Lardo di colonata is thin strips of pork fat that's gone through some type of processing procedure. I didn't really hear the waiter's complete explaination cause he had me at Pork Fat.

Pork fat?

On a pizza?

COUNT ME IN!

Now it was "good" only...it really didn't add anything to the pizza in terms of flavor or texture. It was kinda subtle and subtle flavors are a little lost on me. (Too many White Castle sliders have damaged my taste buds beyond repair.)

The parmesan was also melted onto the dough, which is fine, but I think parmesan gets very salty when it's melted and there was a little too much of it.

Overall, not bad. I did like the crust a lot. Thin and very crispy and it did have a lot of "flavor" but this isn't really the type of pizza for me.

The Monkey got Lasagna bolognese Traditional lasagna.

I took a couple of bites, of course, and it was good. Lotsa layers, lotsa flavor. Only complaint was that it was "warm" and not piping hot which is how it's normally served to us in other places. It was like the dish was sitting out and waiting for the pizza to be finished. Usually it's not a problem but with lasagna the top layer of cheese hardens and instead of gooey you've got a crust.

Overall, Fiore Restaurant's not a bad place. The service is prompt and friendly, the food is good and definitely decently priced (total of our lunch was $35 excluding tip) it's just that it didn't blow us away. There's other places a little more local to us serving Italian food on par with Fiore Restaurant that it would be tough for us to go out of our way to go back and dine there.

Having said that, the decor is really nice and it's a good place for a date or a small group to get together and I can see meeting up with a bunch of friends there for a nice, casual, italian dinner there. The intimate setting is perfectly suited for conversation and a relaxing, comfortable, take your time and enjoy the evening type of place.

And with Valentine's day coming up...