When you're 5,000 miles from home, what better to do than bring your down-home cooking with you—and, to boot, your extended family to help dish it out in your adopted land? Red-sauce Italian joints in Southwest Florida are a dime a dozen of cannoli, but ones like Naples' Cafe Alfredo are few and far between. A meal there is exactly what you would expect if you were raised at a checkered Sunday dinner table loaded with sausage and peppers, freshly made fettuccine Bolognese (with perfectly pliable yet still firm noodles, not an easy feat when made from scratch) and veal picatta. Add in coal-fired margheritas from a giant pizza oven in the open kitchen, along with negronis, wines and digestivi from the full liquor bar, and Signore Alfredo’s vaulted space and his welcoming brood were just what my family and I were hoping for when we wandered in on a otherwise quiet night in North Naples. We hope you'll be saying grazie if you choose to stop by as well. 2359 Vanderbilt Beach Road, Naples; 431-8605, cafealfredonaples.com
Sausage and peppers with a Parmesan crisp
