Urbano Café is the perfect spot to people watch and enjoy a glass of wine. Be sure to check out this tiny gem!
Urbano Café gets mixed reviews from our duo, but over the years this nine table hole in the wall, cuisine laden pit stop, on the steps of some of not so desirable surroundings has been reviewed and praised continuously. I have to admit I loved it more when it was strictly BYOB and the winos like me would bring our best cellar secrets to show off to the tables next to us and share equally. Even still, you can bring your wine, so that’s what we did and our personal cellar always scores a perfect 10! We had a standard bottle of Vueve Clicquot to start, a 1997 Cakebread Cab from the cellar and a bottle of the currnet vintage and always good Duckhorn Cab.
To start the service was off this night. Friendly, great personalities and fun, but when you are missing waters and the bread gets forgotten for the first 15-20 minutes you sit down then the meter starts running down. It seems like all night we had to flag down our wait staff for the simple requests. In a place like this where you expect to spend $50 at least per person, and where the distance from kitchen to all nine tables is 10 yards at best, there is really no excuse, unless you count the fun the staff was having behind the bar “entertainment”. I think not.
The food. Well that’s the beauty of Urbano in my opinion. You can order amazing chef prepared dishes with great balance and variety and pear it with amazing wines. We started with the Caprese S’mores, which combine a crostini, mozzarella with some tomato jam and Balsamic. Sounds classic, but was a nice variation on an old favorite, but I needed more than two. Our table ordered one of every salad, and they all looked great and tasted good, but my Urbano Salad was the most solid choice. I love a good Walnut, and the candied version on this salad had me wanting to eat a bag of them at a Mavs game! For my “Dine” I went out on a short limb and got the Veal Bolognese. Need I say more? Served with a parpardelle pasta it was “saucey”, which is why I needed the bread that came half way through my pasta, and it was the kind of sauce you want to soak the bread in before you take a bite so you can savor the oregano, garlic and basil they surely used to make it jump off the palate. We ended with a very underwhelming cream/cheese/pudding/cake thing that was honestly a waste of time. We should have stopped at the Cheesecake factory for the price. I mean this thing was tiny and in a ramekin.
I will keep going back to Urbano and I recommend it for your next BYOB date night, but make a reservation and take a great bottle of wine!
It looks pretty meek as part of a strip center but when you step inside you realize you are in a cool, hip intimate space with a front row seat to the kitchen! It was so much fun to watch the chefs working on whipping up their culinary creations. The service was the friendliest and most attentive we have had in a while. The next best thing about Urbano Café is that you may bring your own wine only paying a small uncorking fee. The menu changes seasonally and offers a wide variety of tastes for the more daring of patrons or the traditionalist. We started our meal with a bottle of champagne and some caprese s’mores and risotto balls. The caprese s’mores were melted mozzarella between toasted crostini with tomato jam and balsamic syrup. They were simple, light and a perfect start. The risotto balls were not quite as big of a hit. They were made with fresno pepper peppers, smoked mozzarella, queso fresco and red miso aioli apple salad. To me they had an odd barbecue flavor which I did not care for.
Next we opened some wine and ate our way through some delicious salads. We had the 1410 salad which was Seasonal greens with candied walnuts, sun-dried tomatoes, herbed goat cheese and citrus vinaigrette as well as the confit of baby beet Salad which was arugula, pickled pears, shaved grana and lemon parsley vinaigrette. Both of the salads chosen were fresh, crisp and delicious. He dines had veal bolognese which was filling and well portioned. Sauce is homemade and pasta was on point. She dines had the beef tenderloin over smoked mozzarella grits with sauteed carrots and asparagus with shoestring onion rings. My filet was cooked perfectly and tender and the grits were creamy and rich. Urbano Café is the perfect spot to people watch and enjoy a glass of wine. Check out this tiny gem!
