Scatori's Italian Restaurant: A promise not kept

On a trip to Surfside my partner and I decided to try Scatori's Italian Restaurant. Scatori’s is a family owned and operated restaurant specializing in “Authentic Italian Cuisine and NY Style Pizza.” They pledge to bring in only the freshest, quality products & that everything menu is made fresh to order.

The waitress admitted that the pasta was not made in-house and was the dry variety. We decided to skip the pasta.

August is a great month for excellent tomatoes, I selected the Caprese Salad. The menu promised tender ripe beefsteak tomato and fresh Buffalo mozzarella stacked between fresh baby field greens and basil leaves drizzled with Italian balsamic vinaigrette. While not the traditional preparation of a Caprese salad, which should be dressed in extra virgin olive oil, never vinegar, this preparation promised most of the right stuff.

Buffalo mozzarella (mozzarella di bufala) is the cheese of choice the Caprese salad, so says Italian cuisine doyenne Marcella Hazan. Water buffalo (Bubalus bubalis) milk is higher in fat content than cow’s milk. The result is an intensely creamy cheese that is velvety in texture, fragrant, sweet and savory. The perfect accompaniment to a tart ripe tomato. And a ripe beefsteak is the right tomato. Beefsteaks tomatoes are a variety of the cultivated tomato (Lycopersicum esculentum). The beefsteak is large, a pound or more, with pronounced ribbing, and kidney shaped. It is a meaty tomato with numerous small seed compartments distributed through the fruit. A ripe beefsteak is sweet, tart and yummy. Along with freshly picked fragrant basil and extra virgin olive oil, you have the perfect Caprese salad. The Scatori’s menu offering certainly listed the right main ingredients. Did the plate keep the promise?

The salad arrived looking pretty: stacked tomato, mozzarella and basil. But, the small thinly sliced tomato was round, un-ribbed, and very firm. It was not meaty and the seed compartments were large and uniform. The flavor was flat, reminiscent of the grocery store hothouse picked green industrial grade tomato. Not the beefsteak I was expecting. The mozzarella was thinly sliced, dry and crumbly. The flavor was…well, just missing, not fragrant, sweet, or savory. Certainly not the creamy Buffalo mozzarella I was anticipating.

Did this plate keep the promise-NO. Not only was the promise of “freshest, quality products” broken but this plate did not even include the items the menu promised.