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Welcome to your friendly neighborhood Italian restaurant. Oh, not living nearby? Consider moving.
By CHRIS SHERMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 26, 2000
The first winning sign here came at lunch when I asked the server to vouch for the tomatoes in the pomodoro e cipolla salad. She understood my question.
"Yeah, they really try to get good tomatoes, not the ones that taste like cardboard." Not profound, but how rare to find someone in a restaurant who knows and cares about the cursed tomatoes of our lives.
On this day the tomatoes were decently ripe and worthy of starring in a simple salad with red onions, gorgonzola and balsamic vinegar. They didn't have to be; places fancier than this little neighborhood spot have hoped calling a tomato pomodoro would make up for its blandness.
I'd be lying if I told you that people pack this place at lunch and dinner for tomatoes; they come for something wickedly caloric: the sauce.
Not marinara, alfredo, pizza or royale, but a ramekin of a thick orange potion served with the bread. It does have a little marinara, chopped herbs and a hint of anchovy, but the secret is that it's bound with butter, rich, wonderful butter.
Officially, this is dipping sauce, but one dip and I switched to a spoon, a sure sign I was a newcomer (you can tell the longtime fans: they put it on everything, including lettuce).
A decent tomato and one killer sauce are small things, but care for freshness and a shot of originality are more than enough to make a tiny restaurant stand out -- and get more out of a tinier kitchen. And more than I expected in Cafe Cibo, a basic Italian joint shoehorned into office building space that previously supported only yogurt and sub sandwiches.
After barely a year, owner Frank Schittino has made Cibo (pronounced CHEE-BO) a bright, lively space, almost a bistro, with cooks in white coats and busy waiters shuttling through the kitchen and down the narrow dining room. At dinner it bustles like a crowded dining car, except that all the passengers know each other and chat amiably from table to table about upcoming plays, homework assignments and new cars.
They're not here for novello Italian, but for the pizzas and Mama Mia dishes of the south and old Italian neighborhoods, served up with fresh style.
Fresh style means the salads have more to them than iceberg, including a grating of ricotta salata, the underappreciated cheese that is Southern Italy's alternative to feta. It also means the bread is crusty (and good even if they were to run out of dipping sauce), the pasta isn't overcooked and the espresso, even decaf, is smooth and topped with crema. And it means sauces like Bolognese and marinara taste like they have once known whole tomatoes.
Best starters here are the fried calamari with marinara and a well-chosen antipasto platter. Antipasto here is not pickles and cold cuts but nibbles of substantial flavor, thick slices of dried coarse salami and solid pepperoni, aged provolone with taste, freshly grilled zucchini and wonderfully smoky eggplant.
Remember that eggplant and order anything that includes it. The pizzas are crisp of crust and zestily sauced. The Sicilian, with eggplant, pureed pepper and soft ricotta, has so much flavor you'll never wonder where the pepperoni went. In a house special of chicken Sorrentino, eggplant beat the chicken filet by a mile (and the chicken didn't work any better on a sandwich); but boy do I want eggplant parmigiana here.
The one daily special I tried, a cream sauce of ham and peas on fettuccine, needed a better grade of ham (needn't be prosciutto), but I'm glad Cibo steps out a little. There are three or four specials daily, and I'd welcome more, especially with fish. Schittino is from Baltimore and partial to crab cakes, but I was disappointed to see that Cibo's made clam sauce for its linguine with large sea clams instead of the small cherrystones and littlenecks we get locally. When I complained, the kitchen readily provided another entree.
Desserts run from cannoli filled with a fine sweet ricotta cream and chocolate chips and the obligatory tiramisu to that long lost old favorite, spumoni.
Ice cream -- in three colors! -- tastes as good as it did when my family first went out for spaghetti, ravioli and manicotti 40-odd years ago.
Plus now we can have penne quills with portobellos, even cauliflower; gorgonzola on our ravioli, pesto on our pizza, and dinner is still $10.
Maybe the neighborhood hasn't changed that much.
Cafe Cibo
8697 4th St. N
St. Petersburg
(727) 579-1570
HOURS: 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Friday; 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday and 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday
RESERVATIONS: Accepted for 8 or more
CREDIT CARDS: AE, D, MC, V
DETAILS: Beer, wine, no smoking
WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Good
PRICES: Lunch, $4.95 to $11.50; dinner, $6.95 to $14.95
SPECIAL FEATURES: Takeout available