Question: What do you get when you cross a restaurant offering no menu and two nightly seatings of staggered family-style courses, with great live music, impeccable wait-service, tableside magic (not a culinary metaphor here; actual card tricks), and a charismatic emcee who’s not only the evening’s host and life of the party, but also the restaurant’s owner?
Answer: You get The Italian Fisherman, a hidden treasure just off Route 1 past Micco in Grant-Valkaria, where dinner is a fun, immersive, social experience. As if a supper club and dinner theatre had a child who grew up to have a great sense of humor and a laid-back “the more the merrier” outlook, The Italian Fisherman offers guests a 2-hour culinary adventure, where every part of the evening is an exciting, unanticipated surprise. And this full night of entertainment — from soup to nuts (or in our case, from crostini to fried Oreos) — is available at the mind-bendingly modest rate of only $28 per person.
The vital caveat, of course, being that reservations are a must to allow the front of house to anticipate your party’s size and seating, and to equip the kitchen with a solid feel for the quantities of always-fresh, never-frozen ingredients they’ll need to compose each family-style course for your party. I can only assume this savvy system of predictability prevents the need for much overhead and allows them to extend their savings to their customers, keeping their all-inclusive pricing so insanely fair. And if I’m right about that, it’s the only magic trick at The Italian Fisherman I’ve managed to figure out so far.
The Music, Magic and Mood
I suspected I had stumbled upon something good when I found myself standing among clusters of people waiting on the front porch of The Italian Fisherman. They were all eager for its doors to fly open for our 4:30 pm seating — as if awaiting entry to a sports stadium or concert venue, clamoring for the gates to be lifted and stanchions untethered.
But, I knew I had stumbled upon something great, when our magnetic host of the evening, Dave Murano — who owns The Italian Fisherman with restaurant partner, Josh Weiss — issued a tongue-in-cheek warning once we were all seated. “We’re going to feed you for two hours straight, so pace yourself,” he said. “I’m not kidding, we’ve got 14 different items for you to try tonight so we’re going to hurt you. Just trust me — pace yourself.” There’s an adage that says a person needs to hear something seven times before it truly registers, and Dave must have reiterated his insistent pacing reminder at least eight or nine.
Once Dave was confident we’d all caught his drift, the dining room exploded with entertainment. Solo guitarist, Rick Ferrin, began strumming and singing the mellow, moving tunes of artists like Jim Croce, Neil Young, The Beatles and Elton John at that perfect volume that makes dinner music enjoyable without overpowering your table conversation. At the same time, Dave slapped a sealed deck of Bicycle playing cards onto our table, along with everyone else’s. From that point throughout the night’s end, he wowed us with comedy-charged card tricks. Without even having tasted a bite of the evening’s eats yet, I was already wondering, “What’s next, what’s next?!” with childlike excitement. And then, like a well-choreographed routine, the first course was deployed by a fleet of synchronized servers emerging from the kitchen.
Sampling and Savoring, Family Style
In a piece I wrote a few months back about Mustard’s Last Stand, I made a point to lead with a disclaimer, and I feel compelled to do something similar here. So, a plea for the fine dining critics and plating pundits: Before you get riled up about how there’s “too much going on” on each plate, or feel your blood pressure rising because course combinations seem a bit over the top, I’m going to challenge you to flip your thinking: Conventionally, where’s the only place you could possibly try 14 unique homemade items within a single meal? At a buffet, right? But this is no buffet — it’s its own brand of freeform family style, with courses served straight from the kitchen to your table. The Italian Fisherman strikes a distinct harmony between range in variety and “fresh out of the kitchen” quality, prepared by a chef with more that 20 years in the culinary world. And, now that we’re on the same wavelength, on to what we ate!
The First Course
The first plate placed on our party of four’s table was a cold appetizer course. With a creamy burrata and tomato-topped crostini for each of us, as well as a stack of fresh mozzarella and tomatoes drizzled with balsamic, I interpreted the dish as “Caprese Two Ways” with a crisp Caesar salad in between.
The Second Course
I admit I may have inched up and out of my seat, rubbernecking to sneak a peek as the first plates of the second course walked by. What was that beautiful ricotta-topped bocce ball? A mammoth meatball? An oversized arancini? My second guess proved right — this meat-stuffed rice ball was soft, fluffy and tender inside, and encased in a crispy flash-fried breadcrumb shell. It shared the plate with bubbly, cheesy garlic bread and lightly fried artichoke hearts.
The Third Course
Like the one before it, the third course was another hearty hot appetizer course — and I almost broke into applause when I realized it was a plate filled with fried calamari. One of my very favorite foods, this course was the only one that made me throw caution to the wind, outright ignoring my vow to Dave about promising to pace. A nice mix of rings and tentacles, it offered the satisfying meaty, almost bouncy mouthfeel I love about calamari, without being greasy in the slightest.
The Fourth Course
When I first told my husband — who I’ve described in several past articles as a seafood-skeeved land-lubber — that we were headed to a place called The Italian Fisherman for dinner, I saw quick flashes of both fear and suspicion in his eyes. I knew what he was thinking, but he had nothing to fear. Despite its nautical name, The Italian Fisherman aims to strike a 30/70 split between seafood and non-seafood items, respectively. This fourth, and obviously main course, offered the best representation of that balance on a single plate. A mountain of piping hot chicken and broccoli cavatappi was accompanied by generous helpings of Eggplant Parmesan, Chicken Florentine, fried coconut shrimp with a tropical dipping sauce, and what I personally considered the plate’s pièce de résistance — a gorgeous filet of Cod Piccata so delicate and divine that my husband wants you all to know that even he was tempted to try not just one, but two bites of it. That’s a first (and a second) in over a decade.
The Fifth Course
Our Italian Fisherman adventure concluded the way you’d expect, with dessert — batter-fried Oreos and a helping of a chocolatey pudding confection reminiscent of an icebox cake or trifle. And, thanks to Dave’s sage pacing advice, we were able to enjoy it. To answer a question that’s probably on your mind: Yes! You can take home leftovers. To answer the sub-question to that: Yes! We most certainly did. In fact, that cavatappi hit the spot as lunch the next day.
When I think about the things I took for granted growing up, it’s those little luxuries — the ones that didn’t seem like anything special at the time, but which are incompatible with adulthood — that I miss the most. The “element of surprise” is somewhere near the top of that list. Nowadays, even if I do forget what’s for dinner, I have both my checking account balance and Publix receipts to remind me. The Italian Fisherman, however, revives that surprise factor and amplifies it tenfold.
I still can’t tell you how Dave predicted that the woman to my right would stand up to find a 6 of Diamonds on her seat cushion, or how he knew my husband had drawn the 2 of Clubs from the middle of our riffle shuffled deck. But what I can tell you, is that with all its surprises, fun twists and turns, our experiential dinner at The Italian Fisherman was an impressive bit of magic in its own right.
The Italian Fisherman
Address: 5890-A US-1 | Grant-Valkaria, FL 32949
Phone: (321) 895-6283
https://theitalianfishermangrantfl.com/
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