Siro: Urban Italian Kitchen in Lake Buena Vista, FL

Siro: Urban Italian Kitchen is a new restaurant that recently opened in the Orlando World Center Marriott. Siro uses fresh farm-to-fork ingredients, many of which come from local sources in the Central Florida area. Just before they opened to the public, I was invited to try Siro during their media preview dinner. I was excited to try some new Italian food!

The evening started with a tour of Siro's huge kitchen where Chef Anthony Burdo was introduced.

Back in Siro's dining room, we started to try a selection of the foods offered in the restaurant. I'm separating the food pictures below as they are described on Siro's menu.

Boards 

Siro had three different menu items called Boards. These included meat, cheese, pork roast almonds, and olives.  

The Americano: La Quercia prosciutto, tartufo, and capicola:

The Toscana: Finocchio, Pecorino Toscano, and Bresaola.

Pizza

Siro Sausage and Peppers: Topped with hot and sweet peppers. The sausage had nice flavor and the hot peppers caught me a little off guard because they were actually spicy. Spicy toppings on pizza is good.

Green, Eggs & Ham: Arugula, prosciutto, and sunny side up egg. The egg was from a local farm and there were greens on the pizza. Green eggs. Get it?

Antipasti

Ripe Tomatoes: Heirloom tomatoes, ricotta salata, basil, and mint. I love being served tomatoes that are other colors than the standard red.

Golden Beets: Served with pistachio and soft goat cheese. Beets are good. Yellow beets are better (for the same reason that colorful tomatoes are better)!

Eggplant Caponata: Eggplant, greens, and whipped ricotta served on bakehouse bread.

Arborio Fritters: Robiola, black garlic, and arrabiata sauce. Arborio is apparently a type of short grained rice. It must be obvious that I've never cooked risotto because I did not know this prior to this dinner. Nor did I know that black garlic was a thing. This dish was very educational for me...

 Crisp Baby Artichokes: With a yogurt mint dip.

Salads

Big Green Bowl: Local lettuces and greens, soft herbs, simple vinaigrette.

Meats

Burdo's Famous Veal Meatballs: In a pomodoro sauce.

Pork Belly: With pink lady apples. It seems like everyone loves pork belly. Perhaps I'm weird, but this part of the pig doesn't do it for me. This was one of the tastiest pork belly dishes that I've been served, but I still don't think I'd order it again. I think it's the consistency of thick cut pork belly more than anything that I don't care for. I'm guess I'm not a pork belly person...

 

Seafood

Tuna 2 Ways: Ahi over tomato. The tuna itself was shaved in very thin slices, but I didn't like the sauce. It was a bit too much like mayonnaise. Take a really nice, high quality tuna and put it with a sauce that is sort of like mayonnaise and our brains may play tricks on us giving flashes of tuna salad...

Daily Roast: This was a whole roasted market fish. I believe the fish of the night was snapper. The fish was nice and flaky.

Plates

The Burger: OWC bakehouse bun and handcut fries.

Braised Pork Shank: Served over white beans. Another pork dish from a more enjoyable part of the pig in my opinion. The meat was tender enough to easily fall off the bone.

Veal Saltimbocca: With garlic rapini.

Pasta

Cheese Tortellini: Butternut squash and sage brown butter. As simple as it was, this was one of my favorite dishes of the night. The large, cheese filled dumplings were topped with cubed squash and basil leaves.

Cocktails

I tried two drinks at Siro, both of which were non-alcoholic from the Refreshers section of the menu.

The Understudy: Fresh lemon, basil, simple syrup, and Fever Tree tonic water. This was like a lemonade that was a bit heavier with the tart lemon flavor as opposed to the sweeter flavors that are normally more prevalent in lemonades. I liked it!

Italian Soda: Blood orange, simple syrup, and club soda. This reminded me of a carbonated orange juice. Again, it wasn't overly sweet with a strong orange flavor.

Dessert

Cake Pops: These had a very intense, rich chocolate flavor. Almost bordering on the chocolate intensity of fudge.

Cannolis & Zeppole: Two classic Italian desserts. Everyone seems to love the custard filled cannolis and the sugar coated doughnuts that are zeppole.

And that concludes the food pictures from Siro: Urban Italian Kitchen. It is always refreshing when an Italian restaurant gets creative and does more than the stereotypical dishes like spaghetti & meatballs and lasagna. Siro definitely moved away from the boring Italian standards, which was a very good thing!