One of three restaurants combined into what is known as the “Italian Village”, La Cantina is exactly how I would imagine a traditional, authentic Italian restaurant to be. La Cantina itself is at the ground level, which attempts to replicate the traditional wine cellars of Italy with beautiful brick walls, archways, scattered small aquariums, and romantic, candlelit aura. Superb service, genial host, excellent food and desserts, awesome ambience – there are only good things to say about this place!

I will say this: there was a small piece of foil stuck to the bottom of my salmon dish as soon as I cut it, but the staff immediately took it away, brought a brand new dish of salmon, apologized appropriately and handled everything professionally. I did not feel disgusted or offended at all (unlike other places I have had similar experiences at) because of the way they conducted themselves. I still give this place 5 stars!!

I don’t remember the exact name of the dish (due to its long, Italian name) but it was grilled salmon with green beans. Just fabulous. The salad recommended by the waitress with Italian dressing: one of the best Italian dressings EVER! Desserts including tiramisu and rum cake: excellent! I am a fan of that rum cake in particular.

So I have been to both Italian Village and Vivere on several occasions so I thought I’d try out La Cantina, which is their steakhouse. I have always had great experiences at both of the other restaurants and wasn’t surprised when the service here exceeded my expectations. We had reservations for 7:30 on a Saturday night, and were seated very promptly, our server greeted us right away and suggested a fantastic pinot grigio to start off with. The wine selection at all three of the restaurants, I believe their wine cellar has something like 45,000 bottles of wine, and a lot of reasonably priced bottles. We started off with the beef carpaccio which was delicious. We then had the Captain Salad, the Italian dressing was outstanding. For dinner we had the Beef alla Toscanini, which were sautéed in a mushroom and marsala wine sauce, and the New York strip, the gorgonzola cream sauce was to die for. Overall, the experience I had here was outstanding. The Italian Village restaurants continually impress me with their excellent service, knowledgable staff and amazing food.