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Fulvio Badel looks over the
sidewalk dining area outside
his Tuscany Café on Main
Highway
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Fulvio Badel came to Miami 12 years ago as part of a
tour that took him to San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco and
Hawaii. He never forgot what he found in South Florida and two years
later he returned to open an Italian restaurant in Coconut Grove.
"I came to Miami and I fell in love with the
weather," he said. "I came here in December and I could go
to the beach. It was something that I couldn't do in Italy. And, the
charm of Coconut Grove really got me. I said, 'that's my place to
live.'"
Badel named his restaurant the Tuscany Cafe after the
region in Italy north of Rome that has given the world great art,
wonderful cuisine and the delectable Chianti wine. It also just
happens to be the region of Badel's birth.
 "Yes,
Tuscany is famous for its wine; all the Chiantis come from
Tuscany," said Badel. "It is also famous for its arts.
Florence is the capital of arts of the world; Michelangelo was from
Florence, Dante was from Tuscany. When you talk about Italy, you are
talking about Tuscany. I think Tuscany is the original center of
Italy."
And, as one might expect, Badel serves a cuisine that
would be found in a restaurant in Tuscany.
"The food is always fresh," he said,
"fresh ingredients, with a lot of herbs and garlic. They grill a
lot of their food, and so do we."
In October, Badel will celebrate the Tuscany Cafe's
10th anniversary in Coconut Grove, something of a hallmark for any
restaurant to be able to last that long in the Grove, what with the
ebb and flow of the tourist traffic in the area.
"When I first opened we had a lot of
tourists," said Badel. "But, the tourists don't come to
Coconut Grove any more; most of them are on South Beach. And, we used
to get a lot of business from the Playhouse. But, I prefer to cater to
the locals than to the tourists. Right now, I have a lot of local
people coming in, and this really is a restaurant for the local
people. The same people now come back two or three times a week."
And, that's really not surprising. The food at the
Tuscany Café, 3484 Main Highway, is nothing short of superb, the
service extremely attentive and the prices very reasonable. Dinners
range from $6.95 for half-orders of selected pasta dishes to $16.95
for veal parmagiana or ossobuco. Lobster and other seafood dishes, of
course, are higher. The luncheon menu prices are about $2 lower, with
hamburgers and sandwiches also listed on the bill of fare.
Badel flatly claims that prices in his restaurant are
at least 20 percent less than those at any other Italian eatery in
town.
On Sunday, the restaurant opens at 11 a.m. and Badel
serves a very tasty brunch that is becoming quite popular among
Groveites. The brunch consists of the usual fare -- Eggs Benedict,
pancakes and French toast.
The Tuscany Cafe is a quaint, folksy restaurant that
seats about 200 in its 4,000 square feet of beautifully decorated
space. There's a lively bar in the rear and a sidewalk café to the
front.
"In the wintertime," said Badel,
"people love to sit outside and watch the people going by."
For more information about the Tuscany Café or to
make reservations, please call 305-445-0022.
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