Address: Tioga Town Center: Suite 129, 13005 SW 1st Road, Newberry, FL 32669
Phone: (352) 332-2727
2.5 thumbs up
From their website: Saboré [sa-bohr-ay] is a world-fusion restaurant featuring a variety of
European, South American, Mediterranean and Asian inspired tastes.
Saboré's namesake is from the word "sabor," meaning "flavor." Saboré's
menu features mouth-watering dishes that takes guests on a trip around
the world, highlighting exotic flavors and ingredients from countries
such as Argentina, Japan, Spain and Italy.
In reality, Sabore is a BIG budget movie without any plot, storyline, or memorable characters. Sure, it looks impressive. The dining area is quite fancy. And all in all, it's not really a bad restaurant. It's just not a good restaurant. Here's why. It's yet another American take on all of those other worldly delicacies. You can't accurately impersonate European or South American cuisine when you're getting your food from Sysco uber corporate food distributors. The flavor of the ingredients is too far removed from the earth and the individual who harvested/prepared them. On top of that, it's another Gainesville take on an American take of exotic delights. It's even one more level removed.
First up, we ordered some wine. Let me give credit where it's due. Their wine list is quite impressive and we were more than pleased with our Organic Italian Pinot Grigio and Organic Spanish Monastrell, both reasonably priced at 7 bucks a glass.
Next was the Sabore House salad, sans bacon. It was pretty good, but not really worth the 8 bucks it cost. It had a total of two cherry tomatoes, a few slivers of almonds, four slices of cucumber, a very few crumbles of Gorgonzola cheese, and a small handful of lettuce. The salad dressing was a sesame vinaigrette that was tasty.
Next, we sampled two items off their sharable small plates section of the menu. We had the Goat Cheese Croquettes with guava sauce and the Fiocci with Pears (pasta purses stuffed with pears in a gorgonzola cream sauce). I LOVE pasta purses with pears and gorgonzola. I've had a nearly identical item at a few other restaurants, including Manuel's Vintage Room and have always loved them. Sabores, unfortunately, were very plain. They had little flavor and the cream sauce was very unimpressive. It just tasted like white. There were a few bits of gorgonzola with each that did help with the flavor, however without them, it was nearly flavorless.
The croquettes were just as bland and unimpressive. The tiny bit of guava sauce did help, but they lacked any real identity. They just tasted extremely deep fried, thus prohibiting the flavor of the goat cheese to show through.
After these items, I felt like I didn't need to spend 10 more dollars on another shared plate to get the full experience of this place. I was confident I could predict exactly what each other menu item would taste like. In the interests of being thorough, however, we did try two more items.
The crunchy fish tacos were the best of anything else we tried. They had mahi inside with cabbage, pico de gallo, and a garlic aioli sauce. I did enjoy eating these, but they certainly reminded me of something I used to eat frequently in my college days.
Finally, we closed the night out with sweet potato fries. Expecting a plate of delicately thin and deliciously crispy fries, we got the following soggy blobs of sweet potato. I can't understand how the chef could spend so much time stroking his own ego on their menu/website and then send these duds out. The sauce was a creamy dill and Gorgonzola sauce. The "fries" did have some nice seasoning on them and didn't actually taste bad, but they were hardly what we expected.
With tip, our meal ended up being 60 dollars, which was honestly less than I anticipated as we kept ordering more and more item.
Bottom line: Sabore serves some really average food being held up with crutches made out of Gorgonzola.
No comments:
Post a Comment