Tonight (6/27) we were very excited to be trying the very well known Chef Vola restaurant in Atlantic City, NJ. Chef Vola is in a small house and has no signage out front to let you know that it is a restaurant, but is very well known in the Atlantic City area.
We were seated upstairs on their outside porch. The ambiance is nice enough, but we had a "ten top" seated on the porch also who were all attorneys so you probably have an idea of the volume that we had to talk over most of the night!
My dining companion and I split an appetizer which was the tomato salad. This was very good-- it was a large beefsteak tomato served with maytag blue cheese and some onions. This was very flavorful and was adorned with a tiny bit of olive oil. This along with the italian bread was an excellent start to the meal. The italian bread was amongst the best that I have had with a nice layer of sesame seeds on the top. The bread basket also contained garlic bread as well which my companion said was outstanding.
For my entree I chose a special. I had the crab cake which had a basil pesto sauce accenting it along with 3 nice sized shrimp which were prepared francaise style ($39.95). With respect to the volume of food, Vola is a success. This was one of the largest crab cakes I had ever been served, but bigger is not always better! The crab cake contained mostly jumbo lump crab meat, but there was an attempt to also mix a smaller crab filler of some kind into it. The basil did nothing to enhance the flavor, but didn't really detract from it either-- it simply lacked flavor. The shrimp francaise was simply average-- they had a light batter breading almost on them which is atypical to other francaise styles that I have eaten over the years. This also made it difficult to take the tails off of the shrimp which is always one of my pet peeves when eating shrimp that are hot. Altogether there was a good volume of food on the plate, but it didn't really work that well for me.
My dining companion's meal was the better of the two. This was a special called Veal Portabello. This was a nicely thin pounded veal served in a flavorful mushroom sauce with portabello and oyster mushrooms accenting the dish. The veal was extremely tender and was a much better value ($28) than the crab cake special.
When the waiter cleared our entrees, I was fairly content, but the dessert which was Ricotta pie interested me. One of the specials was the apple walnut ricotta pie which I wanted to try. This dessert was served with some whipped cream and was good, but again not great. The downer to this dish was that it was served hot-- not warm, hot! This seemed odd to me and I think it detracted from the flavor ever so slightly. The topping almost seemed like a struesel one with the way that the walnuts and apples were diced. My companions dessert was interesting. It was a lemon pie with a graham cracker crust. Now let me just say that I am not a lemon person in any way when it comes to desserts; however, there was something about this one that made it very refreshing. The pie was a bright yellow and almost pudding like in texture, but overall just the correct amount of tartness along with sweetness. The blend was terrific and was better than mine. This dessert was served cold and was a nice contrast to the hot dessert that I had.
Chef Vola is a byob place and is a landmark in Atlantic City. I will give it another try at some point because I think that it is worth seeing what has made this a landmark in the town. Overall, it was good, but did not live up to the hyped reviews that some had offered. Dinner for 2 before tip was $109.
Overall: 3.25 Brownies
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