Via Italian Table
My mom grew up in Worcester and my parents had their first date over Italian food, so I was almost born to love Via in Worcester. This is an old warehouse, and you can see some of the touches—the brick walls, the wooden ceilings. I love the dim lighting and some of those modern touches. It's a great place to have fun with friends or, if you can get a quiet, dark table, it’s perfect for date night.
Keith Carolin is one of the owner-operators, and he prides himself on taking inspiration from all over Italy.
“We believe variety is the spice of life, so we offer a variety of dishes from Southern Italy all the way up to the north, with a little bit of a focus on Central Italy being Tuscany. But we find that our offerings kind of meet the palate for a broad array of customers. It's a combination of New World and Old World Italy.”
“Whether it's the wines, the dishes, or the ambiance, there's a blend of traditional Italian fare mixed with a modern flair.”
Part of the Italian experience is lingering over great appetizers, and Via definitely serves them up. The most popular appetizer here is the ricotta. They make it fresh every day—they have to because they run out every night. It’s served with locally made honey and about ten pieces of crostini.
“People love sharing it. It's easily spreadable, not easily shareable just because everybody wants to hoard it themselves. Once you take the first bite, you really just keep going back for more.”
I love arancini, those fried rice balls. Here, they fill them with a bolognese, and it’s kind of creamy, making it a perfect match for the risotto. It’s served over a big bowl of marinara sauce with plenty of shaved parmesan cheese.
I have a meatball problem. A lot of times I get meatballs, but they’re so filling that they spoil my dinner. Here, they offer one meatball. It’s a blend of beef and pork with marinara sauce and a lot of shaved parmesan cheese. I think it’s perfect.
“I think the thing that's most exciting about it is probably initially just the size of it. You could probably throw out a first pitch at Polar Park with it. It's about the size of a baseball. It's four ounces of beef and pork chops. Our house-made marinara, ricotta salata cheese, and a fresh sprig of basil, which just adds that freshness to top it off.”
The ragu features five Italian meats. The chef cooks them all in the same pan because that gives it a lot more flavor. It has pork, beef, meatballs, chicken, and sausage over marinara sauce and rigatoni. You get this, and I guarantee you will get plenty of protein, plenty of carbohydrates, and plenty of leftovers. I'm not sure which meats I have on my fork, and I don't care.
The lobster stuffed shells do feature lobster, but they also have crab meat and shrimp. This is ricotta cheese and mozzarella cheese with a lobster sauce.
I dine out a thousand times a year, so I gravitate toward items I don't see that often—like the veal chop. This is thin, pounded-out veal served bone-in with three kinds of cheese: mozzarella, parmesan, and provolone.
“When it comes to the table, the first reaction from everybody that's not eating it is ‘wow.’ It is just one of those dishes that when you come here and you see it going through the dining room, your guests that you're dining with might feel like you're being rude because you can't take your eyes off the dish, but I can guarantee it's for good reason.”
Normally at an Italian restaurant, I wouldn't even consider a surf and turf. But this group also owns 111 Chop House and Sole Proprietor, so I think it's worthy of consideration. Their rendition is a little bit different. It’s a 12-ounce sirloin paired with shrimp, served over mashed potatoes with parmesan cheese. So it's sort of a combination of Italian and American food. It’s served over fried Brussels sprouts that are so popular, the restaurant had to add them as an appetizer.
Via grills the pizza, so it’s really thin and crispy. You're not going to get anything like that New York flop. I got the meatball and sausage pizza, and they add some ricotta cheese. This restaurant uses a lot of ricotta, which I support.
Via makes their own gelato. It is super rich and dense. You can walk up to the counter and ask for samples, then choose either five or ten flavors. I think even if you come here by yourself, you've got to get ten. Served in a mini ice cream cone, this is about ten gelato flavors and two sorbets. It’s like a beautiful painter's palette.
“I've heard it referred to as the ‘Michaelangelato.’”
“Anything from pistachio, vanilla, chocolate, all the way to blood orange, which happens to be my personal favorite. And the reason that we have the samplers is because it's so incredibly difficult to pick just one.”
“At Via, it's come for the food, stay for the service, and enjoy the ambiance.”
