July 10th, 2009 - Chef Vola's

Chef Vola's in Atlantic City, NJ
http://www.chefvolas.com/ - Yelp

I went to Chef Vola's in Atlantic City with some friends over the weekend. Rumor has it that this Italian restaurant set in the basement of an old 1930's Boardwalk style house is the place to eat in Atlantic City. It's also supposed to be the restaurant to go for people watching in AC. For what it's worth, Atlantic City seems to be trying to reinvigorate its image so it's possible that one of the new casinos has a more hip and trendy restaurant for people watching now. But chances are, Chef Vola's will be more popular than that place in 10 years, because it clearly has persevered through many different generations and changes to Atlantic City.

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The second that I stepped into this place, I had high hopes. The decor gets a whopping 10 in Zagat, and that was pretty generous (as most NJ Zagat ratings are), so for a place that looks like it does, the food must be amazing.

The waiters all basically memorize the entire menu. Actually, that's an understatement. They hand you this small menu with four different ways to cook fish, chicken, and veal. Then they proceed to explain the 20 or so specials that aren't on the menu. Some of these specials appeared to be detailed descriptions of items that were on the menu, but it was very impressive.

We started by getting a seafood salad for the table. The seafood was mostly very fresh, although the fresh calamari seemed a bit overcooked, or it was cheap frozen calamari to begin with. It had a very mild dressing, that really seemed like more of a spritzed water dressing than anything with flavor. Since the emphasis was on the seafood, it was acceptable, but certainly not extraordinary. It also came with four large lemon wedges, so once this was added, the salad had a better flavor in my opinion.

My favorite thing about the salad was probably the "vegetables" that were added to it. Vola cut peppers, celery, and a couple of other mysterious vegetables into little squares that were probably two millimeters cubed (okay, not squared because we live in a three dimensional (at least) world, not including time).

I ordered the Chilean sea bass with a sauce that I believe had a tequila type reduction and also was encrusted in macadamia nuts. In reality, the sauce was like a honey flavoring with crushed nuts added in towards the end. This was then poured on top of huge slice of sea bass. It was probably close to 1.5 lbs of fish. The sauce was a bit sweet for me, and the nuts mixed with the sauce focused too much of my palate on the wrong thing.

The fish was generous and well cooked, but it just came on a plate with sauce on top. No sides, no garnish, no rice, no nothing. I actually would have been more satisfied if the meal was the same price, the fish was less than half the size, and it came with a small pasta side, or even just served on a bed of spinach or something. This was a rare case where I think the value would have been better if the amount of food was lessened.

Cait ordered the red snapper which had a pretty good sauce on it. This was going to be my first choice, but she claimed it first. It was better than mine due to the sauce, but it still suffered from being entirely too big. Aaron ordered a veal with prosciutto and provolone (or was it a parmesan) and a tomato sauce, and it also suffered from the same disease as the fish meals. To be fair, it was hard to tell if I was biting into cheese or veal because it was so tender, but that also meant that the flavor was overwhelmed by cheese and sauce.

All in all, I think Chef Vola's was a great learning experience, and certainly worth going to. I would advise going extremely hungry and basically just splitting an appetizer and an entree. And also be prepared to only taste two different things, and sides aren't really included. You might be able to get away with adding a vegetable or pasta side, but that may be overdoing it.

So they used high quality ingredients and provided massive amounts of food, but I was a bit put off by the lack of variety and the feeling of over eating. This was even more extreme than at Elements, although we definitely ate more at Elements.

I did learn why I put Coi above Nicholas though. Although the food was equal at both restaurants, Coi basically charged $40 for creative displays like encasing milk into a little ball or hiding an oyster behind a "glass wall" and for an entirely inappropriate level of service. But looking back on it, that $40 may have been a bit over the top, but it did make it stand out above a restaurant with equally prepared and flavored food. So thanks for that, Chef Vola.