dining guide
Your resource for Greater Delray Beach’s finest restaurants
Angelo Elia’s piping hot pie
Angelo Elia Pizza, Bar, Tapas 16950 Jog Road, Delray Beach, 561/381-0037
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dmittedly, I’m late to this party. It’s taken me more than six years to finally try the Delray outpost of Angelo Elia Pizza, Bar, Tapas, one of the venerable local chain’s four South Florida locations. When it opened in 2013, in west Delray’s posh Addison Place shopping center, tapas joints weren’t as ubiquitous as they are now. But Elia’s menu still aspires to elevate the small-plates paradigm. It has pedigree, for one thing: The same standard of quality that infuses the star chef ’s dishes at his fine-dining flagship, Casa D’Angelo, is present in the ingredients and presentation, and the two brands share a clientele. The restaurant prefers to be labeled as a “casual high-end” pizza place, an oxymoron it deftly pulls off with its approachable ambience and a menu that offers comfort food with
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gourmet trappings. Tables are covered in white paper, not tablecloths; specials, which change every Thursday, fill a blackboard behind the bustling bar; pizzas emerge piping-hot from a rustic wood-fired oven. The restaurant’s most-ordered items, according to our server, tweak the formulas of Italian staples: chicken meatballs served with escarole & beans and a Reggiano broth; linguine vongole with clams, white wine, parsley and crushed red pepper; spaghetti frutti di mare with shrimp, calamari, clams, mussels and tomato sauce. I tried the capricciosa pizza, layered with punchy kalamata olives, artichokes and mushrooms— an aromatic and authentic-tasting pie, albeit with stringy mozzarella that liked to travel with every bite. Don’t be ashamed of eating it with a knife and fork to better control the
cheese-to-vegetable ratio. But to this diner’s palate, it was all about the prologue and epilogue. The complimentary bread, crispy and flavorful even when naked, is served with a housemade, olive oil-based chili sauce that delivers a singular kick with each bite. And there’s no better finish than the Nutella stromboli, a ridiculous delicacy that could easily feed a family of four. It comes out of the pizza oven as holdable pockets of dough filled with hazelnut spread and drizzled with chocolate syrup and powdered sugar, the warmth of the dessert juxtaposed against the chill of an accompanying vanilla gelato. You might want to skip the restaurant’s namesake tapas, and get right to the sinning. —John Thomason
delray beach magazine
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1/29/20 11:51 AM