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Detailed to perfection
Teresa Gubbins
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Published: Friday, June 3, 2005
Capriccio, a lovely Italian restaurant in Flower Mound,
is a perfectionist. It desperately wants to get everything right, and
mostly succeeds.
It's the culmination of nine years of planning by owner
Najam Jaffri, who oversaw every detail, including the menu, black napkins
and the restaurant's layout.
The food - pastas, chicken, veal, seafood - excelled,
especially the entrees. Petto di
Pollo Angelina ($14.95) was luscious: chicken
breast topped with a thick slab of eggplant and mozzarella cheese. Both
chicken and eggplant were tender, but in different ways, which made for a
pleasing study in contrasts, while the melted cheese and rich tomato sauce
made it juicy and moist.
Ravioli di Magro ($13.95) - which means, loosely,
"meatless" - was house-made, filled with spinach and ricotta
cheese. Sounds bland, but the flavors were amazingly robust. The pasta
squares, tinted green, were pleasingly plump, and the filling had a
surprisingly smoky undertone. The sauce combined the richness of cream with
the spark of chopped tomatoes and confetti-like strands of fresh basil.
Even something as tangential as the vegetable medley,
served with the entrees, stood out. Rather than stopping at the usual
boring zucchini-yellow squash combo, it also had red pepper, broccoli
florets and gorgeous petite green beans, all cooked perfectly.
Most entrees come with soup or salad and pasta; points
to Capriccio for offering a whole-wheat angel hair option. Both the house
salad and the minestrone soup used fresh ingredients, but neither stood
out. Desserts ($5.95) included a rather airy New York cheesecake whose graham-cracker crust came on too strong.
Jaffri, like every other restaurateur, brags that his tiramisu is the best
there is.
Lunch prices are cheaper, and many of these dishes can
also be had at Capriccio's generous lunch buffet; they'll also give a 20
percent discount on orders to go.
The staff lavished such intense care and attention that
the service was almost too good; want to bet that Jaffri trained them, too?
$$-$$$
Italian
Details: Lunch 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.
Monday-Friday. Dinner 5-10 p.m.
Sunday-Thursday, 5-11 p.m.
Friday-Saturday. Brunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sunday. Major
credit cards accepted; full bar; smoke-free; wheelchair-accessible.
____________________________________________________________
Nothing Left to chance
From soup to dessert, careful
attention is paid to the details at Capriccio
By MIKE PETERS / The Dallas Morning News
God is in the details, Ludwig Mies
van der Rohe once
famously said. The designer wasn't looking at his plate when he said it (as
far as we know), but the remark is profound whether you're talking about
dinner or a stylish steel-and-glass building.
They know this at Capriccio, where the soup of the day offers
the first hint that the kitchen is serious about its food. Broccoli-cheese
soup, a recipe that often becomes a cartoon of tired-veg-in-Velveeta,
returns to classic form here: fresh, light, creamy and redolent of
Parmesan.
The soup of everyday, minestrone,
reflects the same attentive preparation. Beautifully al dente small pasta
and a medley of fresh vegetables come bobbing in a hearty broth.
Appetizers, too, are elegant with simplicity. In scampi all'
Anice, three large prawns are sautéed with
garlic, white wine and a butter sauce that hints of licorice, a tasty
complement to the chips of sweet white onion that linger in the sauce. A
dinner salad, simple and fresh, is less engaging to taste but beautifully
presented.
The list of entree choices takes a while to ponder, but it's
pleasant in the jewel of a dining room. Walls of mustard and vermilion make
a sunny setting in daylight hours, but the best drama comes later. Dark
napkins are folded like flowers in water glasses at each place setting, and
as twilight embraces the dining room, the cloth fades to black, suddenly
becoming a flock of fine origami birds in silhouette.
Entrees live up to such flights of fancy. A salmon special is
flash-sautéed before grilling, served with a subtle lemon sauce and
a mound of sautéed vegetables. Citrus dances lightly through the
menu like a fairy, informing tilapia, scampi, and – in an
appropriately more forceful appearance – veal piccata.
Pollo Dello
Chef, described to us as one of the most popular dishes, was the one
disappointment. The chicken breast is tasty enough; it's stuffed with
spinach and ricotta cheese and fresh herbs and crowned with mushrooms and a
savory cream sauce laced with chives and chardonnay. But ours was a little
too cooked on two visits, making the outer wrap of chicken dry if not
outright tough.
Cioppino, the classic
fisherman's stew of Italy, was a two-time
winner: dense with shrimp, mussels, scallops, clams and calamari, it sang
in a tangy marinara-infused broth. Fresh mussels steamed with garlic,
shallots, tomatoes and white wine are finished with a light "pink
sauce," a marriage of Alfredo and marinara.
House-made ravioli was a winner, too, packed with ricotta and
spinach and drizzled with a creamy tomato-basil sauce. Chicken cannelloni
is a fancier flight: saffron pasta stuffed with chicken is cheesy with
ricotta and mozzarella, savory with roasted pepper sauce.
Service was graceful, informed and attentive throughout; wine,
water and coffee were replenished virtually unnoticed.
The dessert list is as expansive as the rest of the menu, but
three items are made on premises and deserve special attention:
crème brûlée (with a creamy
hint of lemon chiffon), a generous wedge of tiramisu and cheesecake.
Food – 
Service –
Atmosphere –
Published in The Dallas Morning News:
06.10.05
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Capriccio
Ristorante
420 Parker Square
Flower Mound
Lewisville, TX 75028
(972) 691-5700
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Cuisine type
Italian
Hours
Lunch 11:30
a.m.-2:30 p.m. Monday-Friday. Dinner 5-10 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 5-11 p.m.
Friday-Saturday. Brunch 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Sun
Payment notes
Major credit
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