LITTLE ROCK — Other restaurants may dress themselves up for Christmas, but Cafe Prego is Christmas. It’s unintentionally Christmas, every day, with its red and green stucco exterior and the surfeit of campy wall art and gimcracks inside. The exposed wood and string of colorful lights make it a kind of Christmas tree turned inside out.
All this bric-a-brac belies the valuable nugget of Little Rock foodie history contained by these low walls.
Cafe Prego was opened four blocks over on Grant Street in 1993 by Philippe Petit under the auspices of his father, Louis, who had been maitre d’ of the city’s legendary Jacques & Suzanne. “I think Prego will be a place people will remember,” said Philippe back then.
We remember, Philippe, but do you? Several years ago dad and son decamped for the Florida panhandle, leaving wife/stepmother Jacqueline to run Cafe Prego. Jacqueline assures us that the Kavanaugh operation is still a Petit family business.
Jacqueline, a Moroccan by birth, may not ingratiate herself like Louis - legendary for his storybook French charm and a city-famous gift for badinage - but she works the room like a matriarch, offering some sense of continuity, and an explanation where it’s needed.
“Is that your wedding portrait?” asked Rachel O’Neal Chaney, pointing up at a large framed, colorized picture of a bride from perhaps 40 years ago.
No, Jacqueline Petit said, it’s just a portrait she found at a garage sale. The sister is over there, she added, pointing.
“That’s so sad! How would you like to know your wedding photos got sold at a garage sale? That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The whole tragedy of the discarded bride stopped short of dipping the High Profile editor’s dinner in despair. Hers was the shrimp in dill cream over linguine ($17), the night’s special.
Cafe Prego always has a featured dish, and this pads the thin menu.
Thin, but diverse. There’s crepes filled with shrimp and mushroom and accoutered with sherry cream sauce ($15), several bowls of pasta served in white and red sauces (all under $10), and a popular 16-ounce rib-eye topped with a cabernet demiglace served with potatoes ($19).
The wine list is modest, too - about two dozen offerings - but so is the restaurant’s markup. A $30 Stag’s Leap merlot is $50 at the table. The cafe’s drink prices endear it to drinkers.
I had the Chicken Prego ($13), a baked pasta dish with chicken and fettuccine in a creamy tomato sauce and baked beneath a not-too-thick layer of cheese. The hearty, popular dish that has been on the menu since the mid-1990s didn’t disappoint.
On a second visit I tried the veal piccata ($16), three thinly cut but perfectly browned pieces sprinkled with capers and washed in a white wine and cream reduction. It arrived with a side of angel hair pasta tossed in butter and dusted lightly with parsley and nothing else, and yet, it was the perfect sidekick to the veal.
One of the tastiest treats on the Prego menu is the house salad ($4). This mixof arugula and tomato, radicchio and red onions and olives in a basil vinaigrette is memorable, an adjective and endorsement I don’t proffer lightly.
The service here is friendly, even neighborly, but they’re not afraid to move you along. Twice the procession of dishes outpaced my mouth (my family will be shocked to learn) and once a salad dish was pulled out from under my fork as I chewed the last bite.
The one disappointment was the “Scampi Diavolo ‘Hot and Spicy’” ($16), a fettuccine plate floating in a thin cream sauce topped this occasion with rubbery, flavorless shrimp. Dusted as it was with crushed red pepper, it was at least faithful to its warning, but the heat was overwhelming and out-of-sync with the other flavors.
Along with the popular chocolate creme brulee ($5), the dessert menu features an in-house tiramisu ($5) and a rotating selection of cheesecakes ($5) brought in from “a woman I have,” Petit says. The tiramisu is unique and worth a try, but the creme brulee is tops here, probably because it’s a treat that doesn’t sink you into your seat after your heavy dinner.
Petit and her staff might consider adding a mixed fruit flambe over ice cream. Oh, I don’t know, perhaps a trio of cherries, bananas and peaches, flambeed with brandy, rum, Curacao and Galliano and served over French vanilla ice cream.
What? I’m not telling them how to run their business.
Cafe Prego isn’t the best Italian in Little Rock. It may not even be the best Italian served out of a frame house in Pulaski Heights - a distinction that might go to Ciao Baci, if that cuisine can be called “Italian.” But with its cheer and spirit and stick-with-itness, we should be thankful it’s there.
Prego comes the response, writ large across the front gable.
You’re welcome.
Cafe Prego Address: 5510 Kavanaugh Blvd., Little Rock Hours: 11-2 p.m. Monday-Friday, 5-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday Cuisine: Italian Credit cards: All major Alcoholic beverages: Full bar Wheelchair accessible: Yes Carryout: Yes Reservations: Yes (501) 663-5355
Weekend, Pages 29 on 12/23/2010