Villa di Capo — in Downtown Albuquerque — serves top-notch Italian food
Villa di Capo serves top-notch Italian food
In Sicily, a capo is the boss of an organized crime syndicate. In music, a capo is a clamp on the head of a guitar that raises the pitch. In Albuquerque, though, “Capo” means excellent Italian food in a relaxed spot just west of Downtown.
Villa di Capo, at 722 W. Central, just south of Robinson Park, also means phenomenal red sauce, made from scratch every day, and the most garlicky Alfredo sauce in the state (probably). Both are fresh and amazingly good.
My guilty desire when I go to a new Italian restaurant is that it will serve freshly made bread, which both tastes good and is good for you (if you count only the soul and not the body). To me, fresh bread is almost required, and I will gladly pay extra to cover the cost of an angelic baker in the kitchen.
Capo serves perfectly fine garlic toast made from sub rolls, so they have the dried-hamburger-bun feel, and the salads were made earlier in the day so the lettuce at the bottom of the bowl is slightly wilted.
Oh, and the croutons are the best in town. They’re made from scratch, perfectly seasoned, and generously spread on salads and soup. In my case, the salad dressing was sweet Italian and the soup was minestrone, a thin broth with generous meat served in a tiny cup. Because disastrously over-ordering is on brand for me, I got the mozzarella sticks, which came with homemade marinara sauce that was nicely thin and tasted like fresh tomatoes. The cheese sticks were perfectly fried and stringy, and seasoned with oregano, worth at least a couple of hours of whatever I usually do to burn off calories (which is very little).
The main course came quickly — an Italian staple, fettuccini Alfredo with chicken — and it arrived on a giant plate, easily feeding two hungry adults. I imagined that if I finished it all, my photograph might be taken