Caffe Italia — Restaurant in Coral Gables

It looks like I might be the lone dissenter here, BUT - Can we all agree that marinara sauce, spaghetti & meatballs, garlic rolls and something as simple as the Parmesan cheese served are fair indicators of how ALL the rest of any Italian menu will turn-out? Can we agree that an Italian red sauce or gravy that contains sugar and is totally devoid of ANY fresh herbs demonstrates something less than a commitment to excellence, pride and love for one's cooking (can you say "Ragu?")? Can we agree that meatballs without even one fresh parsley or basil leaf is simply... well WRONG?! And what proud Italian chef in a fine-dining environment serves his prize imported Parmesan cheese from a shake bottle - no offer to freshly grate or shave it at the table? Do you prefer your garlic rolls with a delicate hint of garlic in a rich extra-virgin olive oil drizzle, or rather smothered in some mix of oil whose flavor is now overpowered by a mound of bottled crushed garlic - Enough to have you chewing Orbit gum for the rest of the evening. Ok well by now you know I am really not a fan. The errors here are so egregious that I cannot imagine the kitchen staff possessing the talent or skill necessary to provide any noteworthy improvement to the food experience. Ambiance aside (really a nice comfortable interior environment), this is your basic mediocre Italian-American, neighborhood pizza joint with cheap, outdated recipes and sub-par kitchen skills. Ok back to the food - Meatballs were WAY too salty and no fresh herbs in them. The spaghetti was overcooked. The sauce tasted worse than Ragu in the bottle. The famous garlic rolls... well... WAY too much garlic. Even the salad greens were stale! And - The place was NOT cheap! I guess if there were not so many positive reviews here, I would have been less harsh, but c'mon folks, with all the GREAT restaurant choices in Miami, do we really have to accept this level of mediocre? Before my food arrived, I was very excited by the menu. Hoping it would live-up to expectations so that I could come back to enjoy one of those delicious-looking steaks, veal or lamb chops. VERY disappointing!

So now the owner has replied, explaining that her staff does indeed have skills and inviting me to revisit this conversation when I have 30-years experience running a restaurant. That sounds something like an invitation to a throwdown. I wonder which skills she'd like to challenge me on. Meatballs, garlic rolls, tomato sauce, proper al dente pasta... All of them? I dare say my son made far better meatballs at age 7 than her staff with 30-years of experience. That's shameful. I dare say that serving a sauce or a meatball with no fresh herbs makes her throwdown challenge hardly credible. A more sincere invitation would be to come back so she can make good on the $100 meal my guests and I suffered through and show me what she can really do when she puts her...

I had the opportunity to have a dinner with family at Caffé Italia in Coral Gables over the holiday break. It's an intimate and classic Italian restaurant serving old-school Italian favorites, pastas, pizza, salad's, seafood etc. At any Italian restaurant there's plenty for vegetarians to eat, so I knew I wasn't going to go hungry. I tend to prefer more refined, slightly less classic Italian food, but every now and then you need a good basic Italian meal just to keep you going. The staff was very accommodating to our party – not only am I a vegetarian, but we had a gluten-free diner and three kids with different preferences. No one left hungry.

They served us super good Italian bread. It was very light with a perfect crust on the outside. It was everything you could've wanted out of Italian bread. (Served warm!)

We started with a large cheese pizza as an appetizer for the table. One of the kids in the party wanted it well done, which kind of ruined it for me who doesn't like a burnt pizza. I definitely felt it was overcooked, and for my taste there was nowhere near enough tomato sauce on it. I'd be happy to try it again in the future, not well done so I could get the appropriately chewy crust, and not overly burned cheese, and I would definitely request more sauce

I ordered the veggie lasagna, which I thought would be a marinara based lasagna with vegetables in it, but it turned out to be a cream-based lasagna, with broccoli mushrooms and spinach. It was hearty, and tasted pretty good, though the noodles were a little bit over done. I thought they should've been a little al-dente. It certainly was an impressive looking dish with a bit of marinara sauce around the edges. Nothing not authentic about it.

All of the dishes that came out to everyone had very generous portions and for the most part people people enjoyed their meals, though one of the teenagers did comment that they didn't think their pasta pasta dish was all that great.

I should also mention I had the house chianti wine. Generally I am a Cabernet drinking person but being in an Italian restaurant it's nice to drink an Italian wine. House wines can often be on the lower end in terms of taste and drinkability, but I found this to be surprisingly smooth and just the right amount of...

Very disappointed experience. My daughter and I visited this restaurant for the first time because she felt eating pasta for dinner and I took her for a date. My expectations were higher after reading the reviews, specially that the restaurant outside says homemade pasta,but it was a very bad experience related to the food.

The ambient was very nice, it's family friendly, despite me arriving with my daughter and saying good evening to the waitress in the bar and she didn't even bother to respond back, but that's fine, I let it pass, but that was the first impression. We ate Linguini Al Pesto, first of all, the presentation was not even attractive, it looked like someone just throw the linguine in the plate and then mixed the pesto with an exaggeration of oil, and walaa! Also I think the dish could use a bit more seasoning (even though we ate at home with almost not salt, the pasta lacked flavor.) After, we asked for dessert, and also they didn't look presentable. But, I believe that sometimes the look doesn't matter but the flavor, well this time was all the contrary, the Tiramisu tasted like when an ice cream is melted with cake, and the cake is all moisture by the melting ice cream, that was the experience, also the licorice in the dessert was to strong that killed the coffee flavor.

After that, I was ready to pay and leave. I hate going to a restaurant when the food is not even worth the price.

I wish I could have had a nice experience since it was my special day with my daughter but it wasn't, because on top of that, my daughter vomited 20 minutes after arriving home. Truly, the wrong place to eat tonight. Nothing like Homemade...