Date Night - Veneto

We get excited when new restaurants open in Salt Lake.  We also get excited when a restaurant opens featuring Northern Italian cuisine.  We feel like Northern Italian cuisine is more subtle and their pasta isn't tomato sauce based.  With that being said, we finally made our way to Veneto.  Veneto opened in the space that used to house Forage.  They are the first restaurant in Utah to have a no tipping policy. Instead they add $3 per guest to the bill.  This is a fairly common practice in Italy that the owners of Veneto wanted to bring here.

For beverages, they offer sparkling sodas, Italian beers and Italian wines.  They do charge a $35 corkage fee if you bring your own wine.  We suggest you don't bring your own wine. You really wouldn't want to. They offer so many different Italian wines.  There were so many that we had a difficult time choosing.  Our waiter was great and helped us narrow it down.  We opted for the Rocche Del Santo Barbera D'alba.  It was full bodied and really good.  Too bad you can't find it at the liquor store here.

We started off with the Carpaccio di Polipo which is thinly sliced octopus, olive oil and parsley. Super simple dish but very nice.  It was a great start to the meal.  This is featured on their seasonal menu.

Next we went with the Bigoli con Ragu' di Anatra.  It is homemade bigoli pasta with duck ragu.  This was really good but Som wishes that it was a bigger portion.  

Steven and Violeta was there with us and they order the Gnocchi Sbatui di Malga which was also very good.  Flavor wise, you can't go wrong with either dishes.  

For our main course, everyone seemed drawn to the Tagliata di Manzo which is sliced beef filet served with radicchio and Parmesan cheese.  This, honestly, was everyone's least favorite dish of the night.  It was good.  The touch of salt on the meat was great and it was cooked well but it didn't wow us.  It was a dish that none of us would order again.

We also ordered dessert.  We ordered the Colomba Pasquale which is described as a traditional Italian Easter Dove cake with fior di latte gelato.  This is also on their seasonal menu.  We ordered it because it said Traditional Italian.  Oh and because of the gelato which was delicious.  The cake was a little bit on the heavier side so we didn't finish it all but nevertheless it was still a good dessert.  

Their appetizers and first course were on point so we'll definitely go back for those and to see if there is something that we may like from their main courses.