That's Amore

There are lots of reasons to love Cafe Toscana

Lisa Sokolowski

We entered Cafe Toscana and were quickly seated in the back of the room. It wasn't that we were underdressed, but the seating was at the convenience of the servers. That little detail, which was unimportant at the beginning of the evening, ended up being the turning point in our dinner. But more on that later.

Cafe Toscana is on Public Square in Wilkes-Barre, where the McDonald's used to be. It's fine dining now; there are no Big Macs served billions times over.

While we were reading the menu, we were greeted with a basket of bread, olive oil filled with spices, and two pieces of bruschetta bread with a traditional tomato and onion topping. We were thrilled with the olive oil, which absorbed the spices' flavors very nicely. The two pieces that came topped, however, were a bit soggy and nearly toppled tomato on the tablecloth. Good thing those are changed after every customer.

We ordered a portabella griglia appetizer ($7.95), a portabella mushroom in sauce over a bed of arugula and grape tomatoes. When the server asked if we would be sharing, we thought he was making sure he didn't leave an app off the order. In fact, he was making a note and brought our meaty mushroom out on two separate plates. It was great that we were both able to enjoy the crisp outside and sweet sauce without having to hover over one plate in the middle of the table.

It was hard to decide on our entrees, in part because there were so many to choose from, but also because the names were all Italian. The descriptions were in English, thank goodness, so we spent a lot of time examining the fine print. We finally decided on the Tortellini Mimosa ($12.95) and the Risotto Pescatore ($18.95), two of the few items we could pronounce with ease.

The tortellini was served with fried prosciutto (which tasted like bacon) and peas. The pasta was perfectly good, none of that overcooked softness from this place. The cream sauce was absolutely delicious, and it wasn't drowning the rest of the meal. And the dinner came piping hot, fresh out of the kitchen.

The risotto was cooked equally as perfect as the tortellini, and none of the grains stuck together in a mushy sort of way. We've seen enough Hell's Kitchen to know risotto is a difficult food to cook, and Cafe Toscana did it well. The calamari flavored the rice a bit too much, though, forcing us to realize just how much squid was in the food. Let's put it this way: There were three clams, three muscles, three shrimp (with tails! We would have liked those to be chopped off), and about 25 calamari pieces. Having so much of it made an obvious discrepancy with the rest of the seafood.

We boxed up our leftovers and moved on to dessert (we were full, but not too full). We ordered the chocolate mousse cake ($6) because we're chocolate fiends, and there was no way we were getting out of an Italian restaurant without something to wave a green, white, and red flag about, so we picked the limoncello truffle ($6), one that was made with gelato.

The cake was melt-in-your-mouth incredible. Our forks cut straight through the chocolate-y goodness. Then it was on to the truffle, a rounded frozen ice that ruined the chocolate syrup on the bottom of the plate when it slid as the server tried to put it on the table. The ice was so sweet, it tasted just like the good part of an Italian Ice (you know what we mean, the part that accumulates on the bottom of the cup so you flip it over and eat the sugary crunch of the bottom first).

When our dessert plates were cleared, our to-go bags sitting beside us, and we declined a water refill, we were able to enjoy some conversation as we waited (and waited) for our check. It took a while to catch someone's attention, but we chalked that up to one of three things: the servers didn't want to disturb us; we were seated in the back of the room, too far from anyone's eye; or we haven't dined out enough to figure out the universal signal for "I'm finished."