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Compliments to Chef Vola:An Atlantic City restaurant legend in his own time

By Frank Gabriel

Add Comment | Comments: 0 | Posted Mar. 22, 2007

Bring your own bottle and dine in style.

Compliments to Chef Vola

An Atlantic City restaurant legend in its own time

By Frank Gabriel

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Once upon a time, there existed a modest subterranean restaurant managed like a private club, providing exquisite food and white-glove service to a privileged clientele.

With an unpublished phone number, one had to be vetted by a previous customer to qualify for a precious table. The location was mentioned only in whispered, reverent tones among the fortunate, the knowledgeable.

Those times have changed, at least a little bit, for Atlantic City's Chef Vola.

What hasn't been altered is the restaurant's cachet, it's special niche among those of status, nor the quality of product delivered by the Esposito family, owners since 1982.

That doesn't mean a reservation is easily obtained. We lucked out, getting the final seating available for a busy weekend night, but not without having to name-drop a recently deceased family member who had dined here since the 1980s. With the prime season imminent, our best advice is to call well in advance if you hope to visit.

Our meal began with a pair of amazing salads. My wife's choice, the antipasto ($8.95) for one, arrived in a simple wooden bowl, brimming with ingredients.

I'd need more space than is presently allowable to give you a thorough roster of this fabulous creation. Suffice it to say that they have managed to include virtually all the elements of a classic Italian antipasto in the depths of that unadorned vessel.

Digging deeply, one strikes real treasure, an abundance of tonno, Italian oil-packed tuna.

My choice, an evening's app special on this Lenten Friday, was a seafood salad ($17.95). Served on a smaller, round plate laden with marinated shrimp, calamari and tons of colossal lump crabmeat, it was aesthetically pleasing. These were plated atop a bed of baby greens, including that surest sign of an impending spring, lemony dandelion.

But back to the real star of this course, please. Calamari was fresh cut and not exposed to the mildly acidic dressing for long, to ensure it's continued suppleness. Shrimp were chopped and chunked, sweet and tender. The pearly crabmeat, often in pieces as large as a nickel, was so abundant that it appeared in virtually every forkful. This is a seafood salad worthy of mention with those of my New York ancestors, denizens of that town's Little Italy, with its many famous clam and oyster bar facilities.

Before moving on, a few more words of gentle caution to first-time diners at Chef Vola.

Portions, as the staff will inform you, are huge. Servers work together as a team, roaming the small pair of low-ceilinged rooms -- one of Vola's many quirky charms -- chatting and informing, directing and entertaining customers. This is all part of the experience here, and since Vola's is not a place of dining in hushed tones, this friendliness makes one feel very much at ease. Example: How many times have you ever had a detailed discussion with a matriarchal co-owner about her special biscotti recipes? (I should add that Madame Esposito also serves, with spectacular result, as the pastry chef at Vola's.)

Entrees both came from the seafood side of the menu. Mine, a red snapper in Champagne cognac pesto cream ($34.95) brought a large fillet, probably close to three-quarters of a pound. Crowning the fish was a four-leaved top of that aptly named "King of Herbs" -- another certain harbinger of spring on this late-Winter night.

Oops, we almost forgot to mention the crabmeat. Another downpour of those snowy, beautiful nuggets covered the snapper, and was blended throughout the sauce.

Our other option, wild salmon with a pistachio/honey mustard glaze ($25.95) delivered a similar-size whopping portion.

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