Rafagino Ristorante

Please join us on Sunday, September 7th as we redo our wine dinner in the hope of accommodating all of the guests unable to secure reservations for August 31st. It will feature a 5-course wine dinner featuring the delicious food and wines of the beautiful island of Sardinia (the 2nd largest island in the Mediterranean).

This region’s cuisine is influenced by its original inhabitants the Nuraghic people from 1600 B.C and its many invaders - Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs and Spanish. Sardinia didn’t become part of Italy until 1861, so the island had more than 2,500 years to absorb these hybrid influences. Sardinia's food culture is strictly divided into food from the land and food from the sea, reflecting the island's historical vicissitudes and especially its geographic landscapes, spacing from the coastline to the ragged mountains of the interior. With twice as many sheep as people, lamb as well as pork are very popular. Great seafood from its waters include Tuna, swordfish, sardines, anchovies, lobster and many others.

Sardinia also offers lots of great wines such as its famous white wines including Vermentino, Torbato, Malvasia and its red wines such as Cannonau (Grenache) and Carignano. This is also the location of the largest contiguous vineyard in all of Italy (Sella & Mosca) in the northwest part of the island.

We hope you'll be able to join us.

Please join us on Sunday, June 29th at 5:30pm for a 5-course wine dinner featuring the delicious food and wines of Portugal.

Often overlooked in the past, Portuguese cuisine is now being called Europe’s best cuisine. Although Portugal introduced hot chiles to Asia, tea to England, lamb vindaloo to India, cabidela to Macao, feijoada to Brazil, congee to China and tempura to Japan, the country’s cuisine still remains a mystery to most food lovers outside of its borders. The roots of Portuguese food lie in both native peasant cookery and the ingredients obtained through trade routes established many centuries ago. Bread, rice, spices, pastries, sausages, and seafood — especially cod — remain the staples of many Portuguese meals. Portuguese food marries locally sourced ingredients (especially fish, seafood, pork and game) with a straightforward preparation that lets the flavors shine through with the predominant dressing for grills and roasts being olive oil, garlic and lemon, though coriander, cumin and paprika are commonly used in cooking. From the best seafood in the world to the most sought after and most tender black-foot pig, to the ever present dry-salted codfish and some of the world’s best olive oil, the secret is out.

To top it all off, Portugal as a whole has the highest quality production of wines at extremely reasonable prices in the world. Best price-quality ratio, period. With an immense variety of grapes only rivaled by Italy, the industry keeps on producing amazing new wines from obscure varietals at a rate not seen anywhere else. If you’re not yet familiar with them, you’ll soon come to relish a refreshing glass of vinho verde on a hot summer day, or a gutsy Alentejo red with your grilled meat, or a Bordeaux-like elegant Douro wine such as Touriga Nacional with any meal.

Come and taste it for yourself! We hope you can join us!