Angelo's Ristorante (Miami, Sarasota, Venice: appointed, restaurants, food)

[MollyMillions]

Does anyone know what is going on with Angelo's Ristorante?

We've been there several times with a good friend who just adores the place and is usually a regular customer. He's been out of town a lot lately and we've not been there in some time on our own, so it's easily been 4-5 months since we've been.

As I was driving north on 41 a week or two ago, I noticed a sign in the window that said "under new management". My memory might not be so good - it could have said "under new ownership", but I'm pretty certain it was "new management."

In any case - does anyone know the story? We very much enjoyed our visits there. Angelo (the chef) was enjoyably flamboyant (and the food was excellent); Marco (front of the house) was smoothly professional yet friendly, knowledgeable about wine, and excellent at filleting the Dover sole.

I would be disappointed to know that either of them has left, since they seemed - at least on our half-dozen visits - to have a friendly and well-functioning partnership.

The website is down, so that's not a good sign IMHO, as I believe good management would have the new site built under a slightly different url so they can take down one and upload the other with no down time. At the very least, a front page explaining they are revising the website would be the professional thing to do.



I'm wondering what to expect should we decide to visit next week.

Thanks for any insights (or gossip) you might have to share.

[beach43ofus]

Tough business to be in, and so many Italian restaurants around here. I realize it's Venice, but geez, its waaay overdone. Heck, downtown on the main strip, there's 6 I can think of. Plus, most of the rest also service Italian meals. I need to get to that new Greek place just to support something not Italian.

[MobileMax]

Originally Posted by beach43ofus

Tough business to be in, and so many Italian restaurants around here. I realize it's Venice, but geez, its waaay overdone. Heck, downtown on the main strip, there's 6 I can think of. Plus, most of the rest also service Italian meals. I need to get to that new Greek place just to support something not Italian.

Well, don't bother with the newer Greek place at UTC which is near The Nasty Bucket

[beach43ofus]

Originally Posted by MobileMax

Well, don't bother with the newer Greek place at UTC which is near The Nasty Bucket

I won't, is it gone?

I dont get up to UTC area often. Maybe 6x/yr.

I was referring to the new Greek place indowntown Venice off Miami Street.

[photoman_6]

you should try Apollonia at Cooper Creek for greek food.

[sixstring09]

Bodrum in Venice has good flavors.

[beach43ofus]

Originally Posted by sixstring09

Bodrum in Venice has good flavors.

We'll try Bodrums first since its local (in downtown Venice), and we try hard to support our local small busineses. If it's bad, we'll try other the one recommended further away.

We never got a difinitive answer on Angelo's ownership. We'd like to try that one too, but it takes new owners a while to work out the kinks, so if it did change hands, we'll wait a month, or Two.

[MollyMillions]

Originally Posted by beach43ofus

Tough business to be in, and so many Italian restaurants around here. I realize it's Venice, but geez, its waaay overdone. Heck, downtown on the main strip, there's 6 I can think of. Plus, most of the rest also service Italian meals. I need to get to that new Greek place just to support something not Italian.

Sorry, I should have clarified. This restaurant is located in Sarasota, just north of Stickney Point (aka Clark Road).

Maybe we can start a different thread about Greek restaurants?

[MollyMillions]

Went poking about for more info. Had not seen any posts on the Facebook page since I posted here.

I see from Yelp that Angelo's is listed as closed, as of about a week after I posted this thread. (1/30/19)

Continuing my search on Facebook, I see a post from a page called "Restaurants in Sarasota". On 2/15 they posted that Angelo's changed their name to La Fiamma Ristorante Italiano. When someone asked why, the FB page owners replied that probably because Marco is the new owner and Angelo isn't there any more. They linked to the Facebook page for the new restaurant.

New restaurant's page states they opened in January. Same address and phone number as the old place. General Manager listed as Marco Sforza; Augusto Cafiero listed as Culinary Team.

I have no idea what happened to Angelo DiFiore, the prior chef/owner.

[MollyMillions]

Oddly, though they have a new listing in Yelp, on OpenTable the new name still includes the old reviews (and photos) for Angelo's. It could be a database issue, since in addition to the same address they are using the same phone number, but I would think they would want to make a clean break of things and start fresh with their new name. Especially as there are some poor reviews from the latter half of 2018.