Italio in Winter Park, FL

Everyone seems to like restaurants when they give out free food. Italio is a new restaurant in Winter Park that just gave out a whole bunch of free food. This place is a fast-food restaurant set up very similar to a Chipotle, only serving pasta rather than burritos. That is, except for what they call Piadinas, which sounds very much like a pasta filled burrito to me. For Italio's grand opening, they offered their food for completely free. I was told that the line wasn't worth the bother for most of the day, but I decided to see what happened by stopping in about a half hour before they closed at 9:30. Turned out they shut down their long line early, but they gave me a coupon to come back and have a free meal a couple of days later. I took them up on their offer and decided to get a pasta bowl on this visit.

Since this place was set up like a Chipotle, everything was self-selected. I choose whole-grain pasta, shrimp, alfredo sauce, chickpeas, spinach, black olives, bruschetta, sauteed peppers & onions, raw onions, basil, and mozzarella. The bowl of pasta was huge and was tasty too. It would have been nice if they tossed everything in the bowl together though. The pasta was hidden far beneath the other toppings, and the alfredo sauce didn't seep down to the bottom of the pasta either. It's a minor thing that I'd probably do myself next time if I return. Overall, the concept of pick your own toppings for pasta was interesting and there does seem to be an opening in Orlando for fast food Italian food after all of the Fazoli's closed. I foresee this place doing well.