If you've been keeping up with Road Tips, you've seen that I've been doing a lot of travel outside of the Midwest for the last couple months. Next up on the list of "exotic" places was Dallas/Fort Worth for a hi-fi industry/headphone trade show. The show was in the north Dallas suburb of Addison and I spent much of my time out there (save for a day trip over to Fort Worth to check out an audio dealer over there, and a foray into Dallas for dinner one evening). Addison is lot like Irvine, CA - a lot of corporations are there and because of that there are a number of hotels and there are over 200 restaurants in about a five square mile area. Of course, a lot of them are national chains - which I try to stay away from when I'm out and about - but I did find some single location restaurants while I was there. About a mile away from my hotel was a little Italian place in a strip mall that I decided to check out one evening. This is the story of my visit to Pane Vino Osteria.
Joseph Ajro and his wife, Blerta, owned and operated a couple Italian restaurants before he opened Pane Vino Osteria in late 2015. He wanted to do an upscale Italian place with a full-time chef and a sommelier. Pane Vino Osteria stood out amongst the large number of corporate-owned restaurants in the Addison area.
In 2018, the Ajro's sold the restaurant to one of their workers and went on to run a fast-casual Italian restaurant Pastaza that specialized in pizza, pasta and sandwiches. I tried to find out who the owner was, but all I got out of one of the workers when I was at Pane Vino Osteria was that it was run by the chef whose name was Vinnie.
Pane Vino Osteria is located in Addison Walk, a small upscale strip mall along Belt Line Road near the Dallas Parkway freeway. (see map) Addison Walk is a mixture of restaurants and shops, and Pane Vino is tucked in between a manicure/pedicure nail shop and a Korean BBQ. (You gotta love the diversity in Texas strip malls!) The restaurant was sort of tucked back into the mall building with a small outdoor patio in the front.
Inside Pane Vino, I found a long narrow space with dark wood accents, a brick wall behind the bar, banquette seating along the wall opposite the bar, and a row of tables through the middle of the restaurant. The lighting was subdued and music from artists such as Benson Boone, Teddy Swims, and Satin Jackets was playing in the background.
Toward the back of the restaurant was an open kitchen where a beehive of activity was taking place. I'm always sort of interested in seeing how restaurants run their kitchen and the one at Pane Vino was as open as any restaurant kitchen I've seen.
I ended up sitting at the bar. A couple flatscreen televisions were on the wall and the bartender - Agri - tuned one to the Thursday Night NFL football game. After a moment, he came over with a menu and a wine list for me to look over. To start out, however, I got a Yellow Rose IPA out of the Little Pint Brewery in the small town of Magnolia, TX located about 40 miles northwest of downtown Houston.
The menu was pretty interesting, to say the least. The first thing I found under the "Shareables" column was a Wagyu beef carpaccio with chopped red onions, a garlic aioli and shaved parmesan cheese. They had shaved ribeye steak on oven-baked crostini, meatballs with an herbed polenta in a tomato sauce, and a chipotle chicken with goat cheese flatbread. Two items on the appetizer menu - the pepper-crusted seared ahi tuna with pickled onions, cucumbers and a ponzu sauce; and the crab cakes in a white white/butter sauce - I seriously considered getting. I've found lately that getting a couple appetizers instead of a main entree is sometimes more fun.
Soups included a lobster bisque and a house-made tomato bisque. They had a handful of salads on the menu including a buffalo mozzarella capresé salad. And they had pizza on the menu including a traditional margarita pizza and "pizza di carne" with Italian sausage, meatballs and pepperoni that I thought about getting.
Main entrees included an 8 ounce beef tenderloin filet served with crab-stuffed shrimp; seared scallops; and a seafood cioppino. Agri told me that they still had a lamb osso bucco special left over from the weekend on the menu that night as a special. I seriously considered getting that, as well. House specialities included a wood plank salmon; blue crab-stuffed shrimp; and a parmesan-crusted chicken.
Of course, they had pasta at Pane Vino including tortellini in a wine and butter sauce; a spicy pork rigatoni with peppers in a brandy cream sauce; and a lobster-stuffed ravioli with shrimp, sea scallops, and crab meat in a brandy lobster sauce. All those sounded great to me.
But I've been on a bolognese case over the past few months and they had my current favorite Italian dish, tagliatelle pasta with a bolognese sauce. The bolognese was a mixture of ground beef and pork, as well as pancetta in a tomato cream sauce. Fresh herbs were sprinkled on top of the pasta and sauce, and it was finished off with grated parmesan. A couple slices of toasted crostini came with the pasta. To go along with the meal, I got a glass of the house chianti - the Castiglioni chianti from the Frescobaldi winery in Tuscany that was bold and went extremely well with the pasta dish.
The tagliatelle with bolognese was simply wonderful. The sauce was meaty and stuck to the tagliatelle pasta. Each bite was filled with so much flavor and goodness that I had to stop a couple times and savor the zesty taste in my mouth. This was a great meal.
After dinner, Agri asked if I wanted to see if I wanted to see the dessert menu. I was sort of full from the pasta dish, but I took him up on his offer. And I'm glad I did because they had a blueberry bread pudding topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream that made me melt. But they also had a limoncello cake, as well as tiramisu and a creme brûlée. One thing I didn't see on the menu was affogato - vanilla gelato with espresso and topped with a liqueur such as amaretto.
I asked Agri if he could make an affogato. Only thing, he didn't know what it was. I asked if he had espresso, vanilla gelato and amaretto. He said, "I have vanilla ice cream, but no gelato." I told him that would work. So, he brought out a small bowl of vanilla ice cream with an espresso. He asked, "So, just a shot of amaretto?" I told him that was perfect.
He poured a shot, but the bottle was almost gone. I saw that there was just a little left in the bottom, probably less than a shot and I said, "Just pour the rest of the bottle on top of the ice cream." He did just that. Then I poured the shot on the ice cream and finished it off with the espresso.
"I've never had that," Agri said. "That looks pretty good!" I assured him that it was.
And, of course, it was. I mean, espresso with ice cream with amaretto? Come on! It's killer! It's not heavy, it is sinfully delicious and is a great ending to a wonderful meal.
Years ago, I had a boss who was my first culinary mentor who loved Italian food. He had a rule that any Italian restaurant in a strip mall wasn't worth visiting. I've long since debunked that notion as I've had some very good meals in Italian restaurants located in strip malls. And Pane Vino Osteria was absolutely no exception. I love everything about the place, the laid back ambiance, the service from Agri, and the food was superlative. Don't let the location fool you - Pane Vino Osteria was a first-rate Italian restaurant.
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