Family affair: Randazzo's has been in Coral Gables for less than a year. But it feels like it's been there for generations. And it doesn't get any better than this - Executive Dining

South Florida CEO, Feb, 2004 by J.P. Faber

A. Wednesday night at Randazzo's and already it's impossible to get a table. Not that they won't try to squeeze you in. Nothing would break the heart of chef Mark Randazzo more than not being able to feed you. If food is love, then Randazzo's is the ultimate love shack.

The food is spectacular, the best Sicilian style cooking anywhere in South Florida. But it's more than that. At Randazzo's you are made to feel like part of the family. Which is easy enough because it's a family establishment, through and through, from the hostess (Mark's wife) to the bar tender/maitre'd (her brother).

The interior is actually a reassemblage of the Chicago home of Randazzo's grandmother. Everything that was in her home now hangs on the deep red walls, from family photos to effigies of Catholic saints, with one exception--two wide-screen plasma TVs that show perpetual reruns of the Godfather, interspersed with videos of Frank Sinatra playing live in Las Vegas. Sounds strange, but somehow it all works.

It was at the apron strings of his grandmother, and his mother, that Randazzo learned how to cook what he calls "Chicago-style Italian soul food." That was before he became a professional boxer; images of him in boxing shorts at fighting-weight adorn the menu, and the walls. As a career, Randazzo had no intention of starting a restaurant. Not until Coral Gables attorney Jim Ferraro, a friend of his father's, began eating Sunday dinners at the Randazzo home.

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"The food was so good I found myself eating there once a week. After a few months, I asked if he was interested in starting a restaurant. It went from there," says Ferraro, who backed the enterprise. "The food was just so good."

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And it is. While you may think there is little mystery to the basics of Italian cooking, except using, perhaps, the freshest ingredients, Randazzo's is startlingly delicious. We began our meal with a mussels marinara sauteed to perfection in garlic, tomatoes and white wine. We then sampled a Chicken Marsala, perfectly wrapped in its wine and mushroom sauce, and a gnocchi gorgonzola, a tasty cheesestuffed gnocchi pasta in cream sauce. Both excellent. But what really turned heads was something Randazzo calls "Spaghetti With Sunday Gravy:" simply spaghetti with tomato "gravy" meatballs and sausage. But you have never tasted meatballs or sausage or tomato sauce this good!

There were other dishes as well, including linguini with clams Colontonio (made with fresh clams and your choice of red or white sauce) and sea bass all' aquapazza (a tomato and basil sauce)--both light and rich with flavor.

Even the warm bread was memorable, the chewy inside and crisp crust helping make sure the meal was an immaculate conception. Meanwhile, waiters dressed in black shirts and white ties floated among the tables, the wine flowed, Italian music filled the room--even the wise-guy menu entertained. ("Shut up and eat a cannoli! It's 10,000 calories, so what! You ain't no model!").

In the end, Randazzo's fills you not just with astonishing food, but with a surefire happiness, a feeling that life is good and worth living. Short of refusing to leave and spending the rest of your life within its walls, your best bet might be to go all out and order the $55 "Just Feed Me" selection on the menu (most entrees run between $14 and $22) and let them "feed you as if you were in grandma's house for dinner." Because that's exactly what it feels like.

Randazzo's, 150 Giraldo Ave., Coral Gables. 305-448-7002. Lunch 12 p.m.-3 p.m., Monday-Friday. Dinner 6 p.m.-11 p.m., Monday-Saturday.