Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 22, 1993 TAG: 9301220076
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LELIA ALBRECHT SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BY ANY NAME, THE FOOD IS GREAT
Prepare yourself for confusion. Those nice Brazilians are playing restaurant hopscotch.You remember Norberto's, down on Campbell Avenue near Market Square? Now, that's the Mediterranean. Norberto himself was, for a brief time, wearing the white toque at Inez's Galeria International (in the old John Norman building), sadly vacated by Inez, who went back to Brazil. It then changed nationalities and became the current Mexican Los Amigos.
Meanwhile, during all this hopscotching, Chez Alberto opened, far removed from the Brazilian stomping grounds downtown, on Memorial Avenue, around the corner from the Grandin Theatre. Alberto himself was in the kitchen. Seemingly successful, suddenly his windows were dark with no notice except a "closed" sign on the door.
Still with me? Following the disclosure that Alberto had vacated came the word that he'd opened a restaurant in Charlottesville named, you guessed it, Chez Alberto.
A while after that, advertisements started appearing in our paper for "Alberto's Place, Memorial Avenue, serving lunch and dinner." Confused? I was, thoroughly.
In fact, Norberto has reopened Alberto's place, christening it "Alberto's Place." And it's well worth the trip to Memorial Avenue.
Sundays would be a perfect time. One good reason is the "Sunday Shrimp Specials," an array of shrimp dishes, which often include as many as five different choices - several for as little as $8.95. Shrimp Romano, Shrimp Norberto's, Shrimp Avolo, among others.
Alberto/Norberto's menu isn't extensive at dinner, and even less so at lunch. Nonetheless, you can have more choices than you think because it's a wee-bit difficult to pin Norberto down on what the night's menu really is. Any conversation on the subject usually winds up with a vague "it's not on the menu, but I fix it for you anyway." Or, to another simple question, "that particular fish not available, but I fix one better, same price." Most often: "You just tell me, I try to do."
All of which is kind and very accommodating, but if you don't know much about fish or meat or cooking, what to do? Answer: Put yourself in the waiter's (or Norberto's) hands and take whatever he wants to prepare, specifying only fish, fowl, meat - red or white.
Thus, one night, I ended with one of the best dinners I'd had in a long time - Stuffed Pork Roll ($10.95), which hasn't, in subsequent visits, appeared again on the menu.
It was sliver-thin tenderloin, rolled around a devinely aromatic mix of red sweet pepper and an occasional slice of hot, sweet white onion, perky little green ones with tops, and I think another ground meat, but I never discovered what.
Another time, my 12-year old dining companion ordered chicken in a unctuous white cream sauce enveloping tiny halved artichoke hearts ($10.95). She helpfully recommended this dish for other children, and I concur on behalf of adults.
A fine idea for an appetizer at dinner time is the most expensive one, the hot antipasto (\ $XX?), but it's a delicious way to sample a number of goodies. Served warm, the plate is supposed to include small roasted sweet peppers, two Clams Casino, a piece of eggplant a la Parmigiana, Italian sausage (great!) plus "a warm, generous portion of shrimp." On the whole, the plate's very good but just didn't live up to the glowing description: I was served just one clam, and my shrimp was cold.
A choice of appetizers is sparse, as are vegetables in Norberto's lunchtime minestrone, which should ordinarily be generous with them. But, the seasoning and overall taste was soothing and good. And speaking of sparse, so is the lunch menu. But the surprisingly low prices more than make up for that.
A delicious, large and amply stuffed cannelloni beneath a lot of good meat sauce was $2.95. Linguine alle Vongole with a white clam sauce is $3.50, the most expensive of lunchtime pasta dishes (a glass of the very good house white wine at $2.25 was perfect with this). In meats, the only lunchtime "expensive" dish is the $4.25 Vitello alla Francese. Amazingly tender medallions of veal are dipped and crisped in egg batter, served beneath a lovely white wine essence and served with linguine. The price is hard to beat.
Desserts are not to be found on the menu of Alberto's Place, but what's available comes to you via an occasionally difficult-to-understand accent. One dessert that, thank heavens, I didn't miss is the rich, layered chocolate cake with the most scrumptious fillingof deep chocolate and tart, piquant raspberries ($2.75).
This, and the good service and candlelight at dinner will, I suspect, quickly make Alberto's Place yours as well.
\ Lelia Albrecht lived in Paris seven years, dining, cooking and writing on Western Europe for The New York Times, The Washington Post and numerous magazines.