Special Wine & Appetizer Pairing, now through November 13
Glass of Incognito and foie gras $12

Incognito

Lodi Appelation 2006 Red wine

Syrah, Mourvedre and Carignane are regulars to the bottle’s enticement, but really, the only thing you can be sure of is that the contents will please your palate.

paired  with Pan seared foie gras with chocolate demi glaze, apricot, pasilla chile and Portobello  mushroom

One of those best-kept secret places, Piola is back and still dishing up great Italian.
by Christopher Kelly | Fort Worth Star Telegram | September 25, 2009
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Located inside a converted cottage in a residential neighborhood in Fort Worth, Piola Restaurant and Garden is one of those “best-kept secret” places. Loyal patrons seem reluctant to tell too many friends about it, for fear that – if it gets too popular – they’ll never be able to get a table. Owner/chef Bobby Albanese (his family is also behind Fort Worth stalwart Ruffino’s) opened the place in 2007. But I didn’t learn about its existence until last fall, when a friend brought me there for a bottle of wine and dinner on the lovely outdoor patio.

Soon after declaring it one of my new go-to spots, however, disaster struck: In January, a fire broke out in one of the restaurant’s storage areas, causing $700,000 in damage. Part of the roof collapsed. Many speculated that the restaurant would be forced to shutter for good.

Happy news, for Piola fans and newcomers alike: The restaurant reopened in the spring, and based on our recent visit, it hasn’t lost any of its rustic charm or its culinary flair. This might not necessarily qualify as the finest Italian food in town. But considering the elegance of the surroundings, you’ll be surprised that you’re not spending a lot more.

Uneven but ambitious: That’s the theme of the food here. The antipasti ($8.95) included a mixture of goat, fontina and Romano cheese; salami; Italian sausage; fried artichoke hearts and fried olives. It was ideal for sharing, and the cheeses were especially good. If only the fried artichokes and olives hadn’t tasted cold and flavorless, as if they had been fried hours earlier. The sausage had a marvelous kick to it, and the cheeses were fresh and flavorful.

(Bonus points for service: The dish arrived without the goat cheese, a mistake that was speedily corrected when we pointed it out to our waitress.)

More successful was the grilled bruschetta ($5.95), which featured cherry tomatoes, fava beans and onions dressed with balsamic vinegar. We puzzled slightly over why the bruschetta only covered half of the piece of grilled bread — causing one side to get soggy and the other side to remain firm — but the flavors were clear and strong. The dish was gobbled up instantly.

Curious to see how Piola fared with traditional Italian fare, we ordered the eggplant Parmigiano ($14.95). If you’re expecting the usual eggplant parm, drowning in red sauce and baked in a casserole dish, think again. Instead, you get a near-mountain of soft, not-too-bready eggplant, topped with both red and cream sauces. Personally, I thought the cheesiness of the dish — in addition to the cream sauce, the eggplant itself is layered with fontina, mozzarella and ricotta cheeses — was a bit overwhelming. But if it’s diet-busting, Italian comfort food you’re looking for, this does the job just fine.

The star of the evening proved to be the smoked chicken fettuccine ($15.95), a gorgeously presented bowl of perfectly cooked pasta, topped with pieces of chicken breast and chunks of goat cheese and bits of black truffle. The smokiness of the chicken, the tang of the goat cheese, the creaminess of the sauce and the meatiness of the mushroom resulted in the kind of dish that ranks with the best and most expensive in town.

That’s the point that we kept returning to again and again during our dinner conversation: This is a really terrific place for a date or a special event, if you want to have a relaxed, lovely evening but can’t necessarily afford to drop $100 a person. The main room is modestly sized but, — even when all the tables are occupied, as it was on our visit — never loud. The servers are friendly and accommodating. You feel as if you’re dining inside the home of a generous old friend.

We finished with the coconut panna cotta ($5.95). Again, not perfect (the flavor of coconut was awfully faint) but nonetheless hard to resist.

That Albanese and company have pulled all this off when it seemed the entire place was destroyed is all the more impressive. The only challenge now is for the locals, who will have to try to keep this better-than-ever restaurant a secret from the masses.

Piola and its lovely patio rise from the ashes
June Naylor | DFW.com archives | April 22, 2009
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It being such a pretty night and all, we went out for dinner on the patio at Piola last night. The restaurant in Fort Worth’s Cultural District reopened last Wednesday, 52 days after a devastating fire. Owner Bobby Albanese had two construction crews working around the clock, one doing the interior and the other repairing the outside, so he could reopen before summer’s heat.

The menu’s pretty much the same, which is to say that the food’s plentiful and affordable, with Italian standards dominating. There are some interesting unexpected finds, too, like an appetizer of asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, served with a creamy goat cheese. Bobby’s grandma’s lasagna is a big favorite, with big being the operative word — it’s a huge serving.

Wanting something a bit lighter, we shared an antipasti plate that held various cheeses, like goat and manchego, some grapes and pear slices, and assorted goodies like crunchy fried olives and artichoke hearts. My entree, a classic, lemony veal piccata with capers, came with asparagus risotto.

We sat right by the patio bar, so drinks came quickly — always a plus. We had but one small complaint: the water feature needs some circulation or a dose of some kinda cleaning agent, because a whiff of stagnant ick wafted my way a couple of times, interfering with the scent of honeysuckle coming off the vines climbing the patio fence.

Once the summer heat is on, Bobby will have the patio misters and fans going — or we can just sit inside the air-conditioned cottage dining room.

Dishes like the shrimp stuffed portobellini w/roasted peppers topped with mozzarella cheese make us happy that Piola is back up and cooking.

Chasing down Bobby Albanese is worth the effort.
By JIMMY FOWLER | Fort Worth Weekly | February 8, 2008
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Just who does restaurateur Bobby Albanese think he is? He shuttered two foodie-adored downtown eateries last year — Ciao and Fizzi — before they even had a chance to become destination spots. Now, beneath the shadow of the looming UNT Health Science Center, he’s opened Piola, in a tiny house replete with fireplace, exposed brick walls, molded ceiling fixtures — and no convenient parking in sight (though nighttime’s a different story).

Bobby Albanese has his hands full in more ways than one — local foodies are after him, too. photo by Keith Sternberg

As a recent crowded lunch at Piola proved, Albanese knows his forte: modest, elegant, and attentively prepared Italian fare. He’s got us by the buds — let’s hope he doesn’t let go so quickly this time.

The meal started with an appetizer of grilled asparagus wrapped in prosciutto and modestly ladled with a warm, creamy goat-cheese sauce. After the first bite, it was apparent that these half-dozen thin, bright-green spears were fresh — they’d been cut low on the stalk, leaving chewy, fibrous layers around the bottom. Still, they were magnificent, and the in-law-thin slices of ham — salty and chewy along one edge, fatty across the other, and tender through the middle — only ramped up the explosion of flavors. The lightly musky sauce featured a dash of cream that cut the filminess so often displayed by this type of cheese.
The asparagus’ husky bottoms didn’t deter my guest and me from trying the shrimp-and-asparagus risotto. Here the spears were chopped into small cylinders and mixed with a clumpy, steaming, chicken-stock-flavored rice that bore no burden of sogginess. Six mid-sized crustaceans were perched invitingly atop the mound, its yummy flavors given some extra kick by mozzarella sprinkles.
Nonna’s lasagna is a long-time Albanese family recipe that works mostly because it doesn’t try to overwhelm you with towering layers of pasta or brawny meat crumbles and gooey cheese. It’s a flatter and humbler — but also spicier — slice, with a thin, velvety cover of smooth, pepper-flecked mozzarella, onion bits, and delicate helpings of tomato sauce, ricotta cheese, ground beef, and an oregano-sparked sausage. Flavor, not feats of cheese-and-pasta engineering, was what mattered here.

The stuffed chicken marsala was a little blander than the previous dishes but still superior to what many other Italian kitchens sling. The oven-roasted bird, bloated almost to the size of a small football, could’ve been juicer, and the advertised sun-dried tomatoes proved to be simply pulpy, wispy strips inside the breast. But the soft, pale-yellow cheese (fontina? gouda?) that made up the filling was sheer tangy goodness, as were the sliced mushroom caps in marsala wine sauce that crossed one corner of the meat. The side was a fragrant, rosemary-tinged scoop of polenta: fine-ground, boiled yellow cornmeal that achieved a comforting consistency, somewhere between grits and mashed potatoes.

If Bobby Albanese keeps offering elusive tastes and textures like those at Piola, Fort Worth diners are likely to stay on his trail for a long time.