Cafe Prego has been a safe, dependable place to dine out Italian for almost exactly two decades, starting out at Grant and R streets in the Heights (now the location of Fantastic China) and two years later moving to the old house a few blocks away on Kavanaugh Boulevard that had previously housed a little French place called Chattie’s.
Louis Petit and his wife, Jacqueline, founded the place; Jacqueline continued to run it for several years after Louis headed to the Florida Gulf Coast to work with his sons on a popular bar/restaurant mini-empire - Louis Louis in Santa Rosa Beach and The Red Bar in Grayton Beach.
Brian Lane and Maureen Martin, a Colorado couple (she’s an Arkansas native), bought the place last fall.They’ve kept most of the recipes (executive chef Bruce Alexander and sous chef Randy Lewis run the kitchen) while recently expanding the wine list and menu, as they promised they would do when they took it over.
Lane originally said what he’d be adding to the menu was more salads and appetizers, but where you’ll notice the growth is in the entrees. Most Prego favorites, including the Chicken Roberto ($14.95), Chicken Prego ($13.95), the pick-your-pasta-and-sauce combinations ($8.95 half portion, $9.95 full) and the Scampi Diavolo ($18.95), remain. The most notable addition is the $24, 8-ounce Aged Beef Tenderloin.
The decor, which could charitably be called “eclectic” but which some might describe as “riotous,” remains untouched (it would probably be extremely expensive to redo). The Petit plan was to deck the walls (and just about every other nonmoving surface) in the two main dining areas and an alcove with street signs, license plates, political caricatures (many of them by the late George Fisher), ancient family photographs (of whose family we’re not quite sure, but we’re pretty sure it’s not the Petits), statuettes, art and movie posters and movie memorabilia. (Gone With the Wind and Casablanca, which happen to be two of our favorite movies, are well represented, including a whole row of framed GWTW lobby cards lining the top of a fireplace, which a huge pop-art portrait of Abraham Lincoln overlooks.)
Seating for about 50 is at tables and banquette semi-booths, with a couple of different types of chairs, one upholstered in fading orange vinyl, the others in more conventional black. Atop the table are blue and gold vinyl-ized tablecloths. There’s room for another couple of dozen patrons on the patio, marked by a variety of metal signs (some advertising beer, others urging various traffic actions) and a forest of beer-advertising umbrellas.
We got good service from Prego’s young staff; the same waiter on both our dinner visits hung around perhaps a shade too much.
Appetizers, from best to, well, not so best:
Bruschetta ($5.95), a quintet of “garlic crustinis” (basically crisp-toasted baguette points) topped with a delicious but potentially sloppy chopped mixture of tomatoes, garlic, onions (lots of those), capers, fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, shredded parmesan and a little bit of balsamic reduction. It took us a bit of trial and error to discover that taking smaller bites helped keep the bruschetta on the toast and off of our clothing and the floor.
Rosemary and Sage Focaccia Bread ($2.75 half order, $4.95 full) was hot, crusty, tasty and fresh out of the oven; our waiter poured some extra virgin olive oil into a saucer and ground not quite enough pepper into it for dipping purposes. The full order is designed to share, and even then we still had a couple of slices left to take home.
The Shrimp Cocktail ($8.95) consisted of five firm “jumbo” shrimp (one of our favorite oxymorons), artfully arranged, tails down, around the rim of a goblet with a moderate amount of “spicy” cocktail sauce (though no more or less spicy than most cocktail sauces of our experience).
The Tomato Caprese ($6.95) was just what we deserved for ordering anything made with fresh tomatoes out of season: The tomato slices were bland and actually had less taste than the fresh mozzarella. We detected very little, if any, fresh basil, and the drizzle of balsamic reduction was inadequate to make very much flavor difference. (Imagine our minor disappointment when what we thought was a little extra balsamic drizzle on the edge of the plate turned out, alas, to be part of the china pattern.)
We were delighted by the one red-sauce entree we tried, the menu-holdover Cannelloni Rosario ($13.95). It’s a firm pasta shell wrapped, enchiladalike, around plenty of ricotta, herbs and Italian sausage pellets (very similar to the ones a lot of pizza places get from a food service, though still serviceable and reasonably tasty), topped with a thick, stringy melted cheese mixture and a fairly rich marinara cream sauce.
The rich, eggy cream sauce that coated the Tortellini Carbonara ($13.95) was pleasant; so were the green ricotta-mozzarella-parmesan-filled tortellini. The dish’s best attributes: the mushrooms and particularly the plentiful shreds of prosciutto with which the tortellini were tossed.
Seafood Newburg ($19.95) is a dish we normally avoid (too many unpleasant, and maybe one or two near-fatal, experiences). But Prego’s version is pretty good. But it’s a bit of a misnomer: The only seafood in it is shrimp, tossed with tomatoes, mushrooms and spinach shreds over fettuccine. The sherry flavor in the sherry cream sauce was light but distinct; however, it began to pall on us after a while. As with the carbonara, we began to enjoy most the mushrooms, which held onto the sherry a little longer than everything else.
The big winner was the Seafood Lasagna ($21.95), an off-menu special, with a generous amount of shrimp, lobster, mahi mahi and scallop bits interleaved with firm pasta and interior cheese in a cream sauce and more melted cheese on top.
Prego’s expanded wine list offers plenty of choices by the bottle and the glass (at prices that are, well, we’ll call them “competitive” rather than “reasonable”); a house pinot grigio was $6.50 and we spent a little more than that on name-brand sauvignon blanc ($7) and riesling ($7.50), all of which fit our white-sauced entrees admirably.
The good-sized slice of Tiramisu ($5.95), adorned with a lot of whipped cream, that we shared for dessert turned out to be surprisingly light, a blessing after a fairly heavy meal.
Cafe Prego
Address: 5510 Kavanaugh Blvd., Little Rock
Hours: 11:30 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday-Friday, 5:30-9:30 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 5:30-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday
Cuisine: Italian/Mediterranean
Credit cards: V, MC, AE, D
Alcoholic beverages: Full bar
Reservations: Large parties
Wheelchair accessible: Yes
Carryout: Yes
(501) 663-5355
facebook.com/pages/Cafe-Prego/182478151219
Weekend, Pages 31 on 04/18/2013