This will be the first short restaurant review on my blog. I've been meaning to do this for awhile, because we seem to have an increasing number of good restaurants out in our neck of the woods.

Saturday night, Garrett and I headed to Fioravanti in Downingtown. Except for a few quibbles, I thought it was very good. I started with a salad of tomatoes, spinach, arugula, blue cheese crumbles, and caramelized onion pancetta dressing. The combination of flavors was great, although it appeared to be a hot-house tomato, which I think is inexcusable when the local tomatoes are so wonderful right now. The salad was also overdressed and the dressing was quite vinegary, so when I got towards the end, I could no longer eat it. Garrett started with chicken medallions stuffed with spinach, asiago, and roasted peppers; wrapped in bacon; and served with horseradish aioli. They were very good, but pretty much anything wrapped in bacon is going to be good.

For our entrees, I had a special of Chilean sea bass topped with lobster and some red Japanese caviar and served on risotto with braised leeks. It was delicious, very well balanced, and the risotto was perfectly cooked. I have never liked caviar before, but this was the perfect complement to a great dish.

Garrett had osso buco, which was excellent as well.

The restaurant is small and has an open kitchen, which I like because it's fun to talk to the chefs and watch what they are doing. However, it was also really noisy (mostly because of a few larger, loud parties). Service was pretty good, although we felt a little bit rushed. I was shocked when I looked at the clock when we got back to the car and it was only 9:20 (we went in a little before 8)!

We had taken a Bogle Petite Sirah with us to this BYO restaurant, and it turned out to be a good match for both of our dishes.

For Garrett and me, The Birchrunville Store Cafe is the standard to which everyone else is compared. Fioravanti wasn't nearly as good as Birchrunville, but we really enjoyed it and will probably go back.