CAFE AMICI DOWNTOWN – Restaurant

Two brothers, three decades, one Main Street dining room. Achille cooks and bakes the bread at Café Amici while Massimo works the floor, and the result is the sort of old-world Italian room — small, warm, European in feel — that downtown Sarasota keeps returning to. Dinner only, from four or five depending on the day. Start with beef carpaccio, meatballs in ricotta salata, or fried calamari and shrimp. Pasta is made in house: tortelloni alla vodka, pappardelle bolognese, spaghettini carbonara, lasagna al forno. Then veal Amici with pancetta and mushrooms, duck confit, rack of lamb. There are outdoor tables.

Cuisine: Restaurant