Taste the sun-drenched flavors of the Mediterranean at Cin Cin
KAREN FELDMAN cuisine@florida-weekly.com

Here's a recipe for success: Take three experienced restaurateurs, add one enormously well-traveled hotelier who also is superb cook, add a passionate and creative chef and mix thoroughly.

The result is Cin Cin Mediterranean Bar & Grill, a restaurant that harnesses the suncharged flavors of Italy, Spain, Morocco, Greece, France and Cyprus and melds them into a lineup of traditional dishes given an imaginative twist.

Cin Cin (which is pronounced "chin chin," and is an Italian toast meaning "to your health") offers customers an array of brightly flavored, attractively plated dishes in varying sizes and styles. From empanadas, to hummus, to beef bourguignon, to stuffed grape leaves to ravioli, Executive Chef Scott Sopher does a fine job of offering something that suits almost every palate.

The other partners in this 2 ½-year-old establishment are Chris and Zoe Michael and Joe Caprio, all of whom have lengthy restaurant resumes, and Michael Peceri, former Mariner group executive and remarkable home cook.

The combination has made Cin Cin a reliable choice for a special occasion dinner, wellexecuted lunch or a casual repast of tapas.

While perusing our many food options during our most recent visit, my companion and I sipped some Alkoomi Frankland River Shiraz/ Viognier '04, an Australian blend that proved to have more oak than fruit in both the nose and the flavor. I'm not sure whether it was that it got a chance to breathe or simply tasted better with food, but the second glass was better than the lackluster first one.

We began our meal with a loaf of hot, crusty bread accompanied by a mild, pureed tapenade topped with olive oil and Parmesan cheese. Very nice.

For starters we tried two tapas dishes (Spanish style small plates). A tuna tartare consisted of finely chopped chunks of fish intermingled with red peppers, a generous dose of capers and a sprinkling of sprouts. It was served over watercress salad, topped with a fried white anchovy and accompanied by a refreshing sangria fizz, which the server spritzed into a tall, thin glass from a seltzer siphon at the table. It was indeed fizzy, with a pale pink hue and slightly rosy aroma and flavor that balanced the tang of the capers well.

A nightly tapas special was our other choice: two small lamb chops, cooked just a bit past medium rare (as ordered) over apricot quinoa and finished with a port wine reduction. As with the tuna, the components of this dish were diverse yet harmonious and the portion was plenty for an entrée.

We shared a small Giorgios Greek salad, which was ample for two. It had all the ingredients you'd expect in a Greek salad - romaine, kalamata olives, feta, oregano, a light vinaigrette - but what changed its nature entirely was the fragrant chopped mint mixed throughout.

I've gotten somewhat gun shy about ordering grouper in all but a select few restaurants these days. Although there has been a government crackdown on restaurants that purport to offer grouper but substitute characterless tilapia or equally insipid basa (or some other faux grouper), far too many continue the practice, most likely owing to the much higher price of the authentic article.

Grouper is a safe bet at Cin Cin, however, which has built its reputation, in part, on using high-quality products.

The night's grouper special starred a thick, moist filet accompanied by asparagus, sundried tomatoes and lentils accompanied by an herbed goat-cheese zucchini blossom. It was a pleasing montage of textures and flavors with a peppery finish.

I desperately wanted one of my favorite Sopher creations, the paella (a spicy and wonderful rendition of this Spanish dish). But I chose something I'd never tried before, the crispy skin duck breast over a sweet potatobarley risotto accompanied by pomegranate gelee. I'd suggest a new name for this dish because the skin isn't crisp (which the server told me when I asked before ordering), but the duck was good nonetheless. The risotto was much lighter than the standard variety, chewy from the barley, slightly sweet from the potatoes. A lovely lagniappe was the little tart square of pomegranate gelee that proved a great counterpoint to the duck.

Even though Cin Cin offers bite-sized desserts, we couldn't even manage that. I can attest from previous visits that the ones I've tried have been petite and satisfying.

Cin Cin's attention to detail doesn't end at the food. The dining room is a soothing oasis, with red and mustard-colored walls, tables draped in red over white tablecloths and soft music playing in the background. The server deftly whipped out a black linen napkin before I could pick up the white one on the table. He was not about to allow white lint to jump from that napkin onto my dark blue outfit.

There was but one off note to the evening and it came from The Red Room, the aptly named bar, when the evening's live entertainment commenced. There's no door between dining room and bar. As a result, we could clearly hear the live music emanating from the bar as it battled Gershwin's moving "Rhapsody in Blue" on the dining room sound system. A sturdy door between the two spaces would take care of that problem. Meanwhile, perhaps just turning off the music in the dining room would improve matters.

That's the only aspect of dinner that needs fine tuning at Cin Cin and it's a fairly straightforward one.

When I want to go someplace at which I can count on fresh, imaginative food and attentive treatment, I can always rely on Cin Cin to deliver. ¦