| rev:text
| - I loathe chain restaurants with a zeal that can only be described as fury, but Bravo! is one of the few chain options that I not only tolerate, I actually enjoy.
Bravo's focus is Northern Italian food, which is not your typical "Americanized" Italian. Northern Italian style food is lighter, simpler, and fresher. "Americanized" Italian is what most American's think of Italian; heavy/hearty red sauces, including heavy meat sauces, overloaded cheese, tons of pasta, and the only veggie in sight is a iceberg lettuce salad. Having traveled to Southern France, near the Italian border, my wife and I love Northern Italian food and hate "Americanized" Italian. The latter just makes us feel sick and bloated.
The single defining characteristic of Bravo that I notice is that there is a freshness level to the food that is not typical in other chain restaurants, and that has brought us here more than once. For example, their pizza and flatbreads use real fresh mozzarella (not shredded and bagged) and fresh basil. My favorite pasta dish has pine nuts and fresh spinach.
After multiple dinners there, my wife and I have always enjoyed everything we've ordered. The flatbread appetizers are especially good; my wife often makes a meal of just the flatbread appetizer and a salad.
I typically get the Penne Mediterranean with chicken which is always good. I like the fact that they use multi-grain pasta and the olive oil sauce is light, without being overly bloating like other heavy pasta dishes can be. Another notable point is that their pasta dishes can be ordered in half sizes, but it's a little more than half the price of the full dish. I usually order the half size pasta because it is more than adequate for me, the net bill is lower, and there is no waste to be thrown out (or brought home in a doggy bag).
My wife and I are also tiramisu freaks and try to sample each restaurants' version whenever we dine out and it's on the menu. Bravo's version is very good, not the best I've ever had, but still very good.
Lastly, I've found Bravo to be kid friendly and have had success brining my two-year old there for dinner. My wife and I usually go for an early seating (5-6pm) and during the summer sit on the patio. The noise level of the restaurant or patio drowns out my toddler's occasional random noises, he especially enjoys coloring on the paper table covers, and the wait staff has been great with him.
In summary, my wife and I consider ourselves restaurant snobs and target patronizing independent places, but Bravo has turned out to be a solid option; especially when we have a kid in tow and need something convenient and casual enough for a toddler. Bravo also has turned out to be a decent fall-back option when I travel on business and I'm stuck in a location that little other alternatives. Unlike other chain restaurants, food freshness and quality doesn't leave me feeling disgusting when I leave there.
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