Category: Restaurants

While waiting for an oil change I had lunch at Restaurante Brasil in the south end of Sandalfoot Plaza, near Express Car Wash. It is a buffet restaurant priced by the pound, similar in many ways to Picanha Brazil on the other side of 441.
The interior is fairly nice for a buffet place with booths and tables. The tables appear to have granite tops or a good fake. Booth tables are wood.

The buffet has three main parts. First the salads, with a few fruits, vegetables, potato salad and chicken salad.

Next the hot food, with a decent variety including rice, beef and potato stew, beans, sausages, collard greens and more. The meat in the stew was a little fatty but flavor was good and everything else was great.

As with Picanha, the highlight is the fresh from the oven meats. There is a wide selection here with pork, beef sirloin, sausages and several others. Not knowing Portuguese or Brazilian cuisine, I chose the garlic sirloin. It was excellent.

Finally, I succumbed to temptation and had a tres leches for dessert. This is ordered from the server and is priced differently, $2.99. It was very sweet, though oddly served in a plastic take-home package. Rancheritos does that too. Must be a Latin American thing.

Update: Frankie’s closed and has been replaced by Steven’s.
On our way to Chili’s in West Boca Square we noticed Frankie’s. So we figured we’d try it.

Apparently it’s been open here for 2 months, replacing “Venenzia”. Lunch specials today include 2 slices and a soda for $5.99. We ordered from the menu lunch specials, baked ziti and lasagna, for about $7-8 or so. They come with soup or salad.
Interior is pleasant:

I would joke that the Italian wedding soup came from the same can as Rotelli’s but I like them both. There were only two small meatballs, and I’ve had the same experience at Rotelli’s. Despite that it was good, and so was the pasta fagioli.

The garlic rolls were just fine:

Next, the entrees. The baked ziti was good.

The lasagna was a bit disappointing. It looked okay when it came. The picture below didn’t come out great due to lighting. The sauce was a little sweeter than I like but still okay.

Then I cut into it and took a bite from the center. The cheese was still cold, almost frozen.

I ate around. I did like the rest of it but that was disappointing.
We also overheard a vibrant conversation from a nearby table, with profanity and crazy talk, which we did enjoy.

We are working on a “Best Restaurants of West Boca” article. Please post comments here or send us an e-mail.
We will pick some of our favorite restaurants and talk about which are the best. Preference will be given to restaurants in West Boca itself. But we will certainly consider restaurants in nearby areas, such as the rest of Boca Raton, Delray Beach, Parkland and Coconut Creek.
Possible categories include genre (Best Italian, Thai, Japanese, etc.), restaurant type (Best sit-down, fast-casual, fast-food, chain, breakfast, and so on).
Tell us what you think!

**Update** We were in the plaza in early March and Damiano no longer serves lunch – dinner only.**
We had lunch today at the new Damiano at Regency Court, on the northwest corner of Yamato and Jog. The interior is spacious, with few customers today perhaps because it is so new.

The interior design includes different ceilings and lighting fixtures in different sections of the floor plan. I don’t know what a professional critic would say but we liked it.
They brought us some garlic bread, which I sampled despite my low carb diet. It was very nice (and not just because of the diet). Firm crust, soft inside with a buttery garlic feel.

We each had a soup. One had pasta fagioli, which was more bean than soup and excellent.

The greens and beans was more soupy and loaded with garlic in a good way.

For entree I had the special, salmon livornese. It had outstanding flavor, with cherry tomatoes, onion, olives and capers. I asked and it is on the regular dinner menu though usually not on the lunch menu.

The chicken parmigiana was good but not spectacular. The sauce worked but barely. It was a very large portion.

This was a quality lunch. It’s not cheap though. Soups were $6 and entrees were $14. With drinks (a coke and a hot tea) it was $49 before tip. We are used to spending a lot less for lunch but we did get value for the money.