Villa Ravenna, Tulsa, Oklahoma

Wednesday evening, I went to The Farm shopping center with my friend Tony, where we ate at Villa Ravenna, a northern Italian-style restaurant.

Now, Tulsa doesn't really have much of an Italian community, so there's no "Little Italy" like there is in some of the big cities like Chicago or New York. Nevertheless, Italian immigrants have come to town seeing the opportunity to bring their home town cooking to the Oklahoma prairie. The owners branched off of a family restaurant in Houston called Via Emilia, and they use the same family recipes from Ravenna, an Italian town on the north Adriatic Sea coast. Interestingly, it's in the old Casa Laredo Mexican location, a local chain that Tony's family has patronized for years. The new decor is mostly accomplished with lots of green and red Italian flag colors and bunches of plastic grapes on lattice arbors, but it looks more old-style Italian-American cafe than tacky.

We started off with glasses of chianti while we tried to read the menus in the very dark restaurant; our table was illuminated with but one lighted taper in the center. Tony ordered the avocado salad and I ordered the cream of mushroom soup. My soup arrived so hot I couldn't eat it at first. The bowl was filled with a nice, thick, flavorful soup.



For his main course, Tony got the veal parmegiana. I found their presentation and recipe interesting; there was a layer of ham between the veal and the melted mozzarella cheese. It came with a side of spaghetti.

Speaking of which, I had the spaghetti carbonara. The carbonara was good, but once again, the recipe was interesting and non-traditional. Instead of just using egg and parmesan cheese, they put a little bit of alfredo sauce on the pasta.


In lieu of dessert, we each had a little glass of limoncello.


Overall, I thought the restaurant was nice for Tulsa, but I have to admit that I'm rather spoiled by some of the wonderful Italian restaurants on the East Coast, so the Tulsa place didn't "wow" me. There were a number of interesting entrees on the menu, though, that I would love to try on a future visit, and I've since heard that the osso bucco here is fantastic, so I'll have to check it out for myself.