Cape Fine Dining

Abbicci: The ABC?s of Italian

Sometimes a restaurant takes on a personality of its own, regardless of who’s doing the cooking.

Abbicci is an intimate restaurant, on the town line in Yarmouthport, near Cummaquid. It’s a familiar and reassuring site to the locals. It recently underwent a face lift which makes it much more inviting. And the valet service makes parking a cinch. Parking can be a challenge otherwise.

Atmosphere

This is the type of restaurant you take your spouse to. In fact, all the diners this night were couples. It’s a nice place to set the mood for the rest of the evening. Understated, with no particular decor, no special lighting and no tacky music. Just a simple ensemble of elegantly set dining rooms and tables.

Service

And that’s the thing with a date night restaurant, it’s not about the food.  Service is the thing. And Abbicci delivers it in buckets. The wait staff was extremely efficient. Swift, silent and unobtrusive to the point of being invisible. Exactly what you want if you’re focusing on your date. Memorable by its absence.

Food

An ode to Marcella Hazan, the menu gives a lesson in classic Italian cuisine. And therein lies its secret.  Abbicci hooks you with their menu. It reads like a romance novel. It seduces you. Unfortunately, just like reading a book, it tends to leave you unsatisfied.

We ordered the (very) small portions of several dishes. Arancini –  the 2 small risotto croquettes filled with cheese, were a bit too skimpy. Risotto – not the rich creamy porridge variety, but the rice side dish kind, was overwhelmed by black pepper. Cannelloni – a spinach pasta stuffed with veal, in tomato sauce and béchamel, was interesting enough. But the Pesce – a delicately pan prepared sole in a Milanese style, egg battered with lemon and olives, was the best selection of the evening.

The dessert menu featured, what else - chocolate. We tried the Trio of Chocolate, a sampler of favorites, otherwise, made with chocolate.

Wine

The extensive wine menu is skewed in favor of very expensive wines at some very generous prices.  We chose a bottle of  syrah from a small California vineyard. Delicious.

The season’s over, the kitchen’s tired, and it shows. Overall we give Abbicci 2 ** for setting the scene for date night right. But you have to shell out some serious plastic to get the mood right. So it’s also 3$$$ for Abbicci.  Subconsciously, that's part of the seduction.