The portfolio is small. Restaurateur and Sfuzzi alum Robert Colombo and partner William Solomon have just Trece and The Club as whet holdings. But Villa-O will slip between them in December. What is Villa-O? Think Al Gore meets marinara.
Villa-O is billed as a fresh (read: environmentally sensitive; think: the new metrosexuality) take on casual cool. It features handmade pasta made with organic flour. It serves grass-fed beef and wild fish. It has a wine list of just 50 wines (somewhere, bottles will be saved), all available by the glass, including some very non-Italian stuff called Dom Pérignon.
It takes aquamarine design cues from Italy’s Isle of Capri. It has a wood-burning oven (to smolder hand-tossed pizza and focaccia) and a patio where fine cigars plucked from an elegant humidor can be enjoyed (presumably with your choice of carbon-offset investments: live oak plantings, iPods powered by respiring alfalfa sprouts or the ever-popular hamster Prius).
But the greenest of Villa-O offerings is in-house purified and gassed water service, making for fresh purified water in both still and bubbly versions without bottles -- the bane of chic Gore-friendly cities everywhere. Shaping up in the former Samba Room on Travis Walk across the street from Colombo portfolio sibling Trece, Villa-O is driven by Vincenzo Indelicato, current chef at The Club and once-upon-a-time concept chef for Nicola’s Ristorante Italiano in Plano.
O -- and on Sunday evenings Villa-O hosts family night featuring a three-course meal of unlimited salad, handmade pasta, pizza, Italian specialties and desserts can be had. Think of it as Gore-ge night. --Mark Stuertz
