Kitchenetta

Kitchenetta:  2850 N Federal Hwy, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33306

I must have driven past this place hundreds of times over the past 10 yrs.  Kitchenetta has been in business since 2004.  The owners Vincent Foti and Maria Ferrari-Foti opened Kitchenetta as a trattoria tipica italiana.  The Italian Trattoria is traditionally  small and informal where the local gentry can have great home style cooking at reasonable prices.  I’m not so sure about the reasonable prices part, but we’ll talk a bit more about that later on.  They make their food from scratch, so you need to allow time for everything to be prepared.  This is not going to be one of those places you get in and out of quickly, and you should plan on at least two hours for dinner.  Don’t expect a full bar here, as they only serve beer and wine.  The menu and wine list change several times a year based on seasonality and availability.  They feature a menu of classical Italian dishes as well as daily specials.

For Starters:

At Kitchenetta, when you look at the menu, you are going to notice that it is in Italian.  Don’t worry, if you aren’t fluent in the language, there is an English translation on the back of the menu.  For your dining pleasure there are two options.  First is the family style.  This means that you will choose a few of your favorite dishes and they will bring out a large portion that you can then serve to each other.  Thus the family style.  We highly recommend this as it was a very easy way to enjoy our meal.  We had seven people in our party and two main dishes, bread, and two starters were plenty of food with extra leftover. If you like a light beer, we definitely recommend a Peroni.

The Food:

Our group started with the salad.  It’s made up of Baby Greens, Arugula, Endive, Radicchio, Fennel, Roasted Beets, & Tomatoes.  The balsamic dressing is lightly drizzled over the greens to give you just enough flavor, without soaking the lettuce.  After grazing on the salad, our next appetizer were the Meatballs, like Mama used to make.  The Meatballs were served with a nice helping of cheese that just melts in your mouth.  For the main dishes, we decided on two of their specials of the day which included the breaded veal cutlets topped with prosciutto, mozzarella, and red sauce.  The veal was nice and tender and there is an amazing amount of mozzarella cheese on top.   The sauce itself lacked some flavor, but that was made up for with the prosciutto on top of the veal.    Overall this dish was delicious and everyone at the table really enjoyed it.  We even had some left over to take home.  Our second main dish was a roasted pork (similar to pulled pork), mixed with rotini pasta, peas and lots of parmesan cheese.  There was a lot of flavor in this dish and the whole table really enjoyed it.  Not much was left at the end for taking home.

Our only complaint here is that the background music plays very loud which kind of takes away from the ambience.  However once they turned it down for us, it really did set the mood for your meal.

Pricing: $$$$ – $$$$$ dinner