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Café Rosario?Äôs Pizza and Deli
3425 Broadway St.
American Canyon
707 643-5464

Monday ?Äì Friday Lunch 11:30 a.m. ?Äì 2:30 p.m.
Monday ?Äì Friday Dinner 5 p.m. ?Äì 10 p.m.
Saturday noon ?Äì 10 p.m.

A casual comment in a yoga class led me up highway 29 to explore Café Rosario. The person who told me about this café said, “It’s good for either a casual lunch of pizza or something special at dinner. The food is really good.” This simple review sums up Café Rosario.

The café is located in the building that looks like a lighthouse in the middle of a parking lot just north of American Canyon Road. There is a Mexican food restaurant in the same parking lot with a similar name, but they are not related.

The atmosphere of Café Rosario’s is very European from the background music to the outdoor tables. This is a place where you can get a quick meal to go or linger for hours over an espresso.

The single page menu seems simple. The dinner menu features more pasta and elaborate entrees. The lunch menu is divided into appetizers, pastas and sandwiches. Most of the appetizers are the expected salads like Caesar and a fresh tomato Caprese, with a flag of Italian authenticity, Breasola or air-cured beef, thrown in. Pizza is listed at the very bottom of the page as just that, “Pizza.”

It turns out you can build your own pizza with whatever ingredients the kitchen has for $2/ingredient. My partner ordered a pizza with olives and garlic. He received a hot pie with lots of whole olives, large chunks of garlic and a generous amount of melted cheese. The crust was so thin it seemed a miracle it held the toppings. I loved the way this crust melted in my mouth leaving the flavors of the toppings.

The soup of the day was called Minestrone, but I’ve never seen a minestrone like this. The soup was loaded with barley, lentils and other vegetables. It had a rich broth with strong infusion of herbs and garlic. My partner didn’t like the fact that some of the carrot chunks had been toasted a little too much in the sautéing, but this didn’t stop us from cleaning the bowl.

The roasted vegetable pannini is a generous sandwich of layers of roasted eggplant and zucchini with marinated bell peppers and melted cheese. The vegetables in the sandwich were well prepared, but it was the bread that really impressed me. This is the real thing, an Italian white roll that somehow is not heavy.

The pannini come with a small salad of mixed greens tossed in a balsamic vinaigrette. It’s the details, like a really good salad dressing that raise Café Rosario above the average Italian café.

Our meal ended with an espresso. Once again I was impressed ?Äì this is how I remember espresso in Italy ?Äì strong as syrup and bitter.

Around us, people were indulging in other items. The rich eggplant parmesan came stacked high in a bowl. The Caesar salad featured whole leaves of romaine. The Italian sparkling wine, prosecco, and wines were pouring. I look forward to returning to Café Rosario for a celebration to indulge in more of this fine cooking.

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