Best Family Style Restaurants in Cardiff By The Sea

Fantastic cocktails, food, service and ambiance. Great happy hour and fun live music as well

We love Davanti Del Mar. We have been to their sister restaurant in Little Italy in San Diego and this was just as amazing. We came for an early dinner for Happy Hour and the prices and selections were excellent. We started with the focaccia bread with ricotta and honey. Amazing and delicious! We shared Meatballs and Cacio del Pepe. Everything was wonderful and big portions with plenty to share. I had a Tuscan wine and my dinner guest had the Aperol spritz-all very good. We shared the lava cake with gelato-very good! Highly recommend this restaurant! By the way, our server and the service was excellent too!

We have eaten here may times in the past. We remember how great the restaurant was previous to covid and the redo. Unfortunately, quality of food seems to have gone a little down hill. Menu items are very limited, Service was excellent as always. We were treated extremely well. The restaurant was maybe 10- 15 % full and very quiet: no vibe at all. I think a menu change might be in order to pacify the hundreds of hotel guests. We always eat breakfast at Ponto Lago and our meals and service were all excellent as always.

Great recommendation from the sommelier, even bought a bottle to bring home. Excellent service and food!

We started with the Fritto Misto. Perfectly fabricated bite sized light pieces light of squid and shrimp, instead of the large cumbersome chewy offerings at most places. Smaller pieces = more surface area= more tasty light batter to dip in the delicious aoili. The pickled Bermuda was a lovely garnish. (Although my wife snagged most of that) The massive ribeye almost made me want to disgorge the appetizer to make room. The presentation was flawless. Chef Cameron outdid himself on the rub and preparation. Cooked perfectly to medium rare. Somehow he was able to pyrolize the fat so that I ate all of it. The little red vegetables on top we're also exquisitely sweet and tasty. I can only assume that they were some type of neonatal peppers. The shrimp were also fantastic. I believe Chef Cameron told me there was some blackening and something else that caused the malliard reaction to occur that gave it a sweet flavor. The roasted salsa verde acted as a perfect "gravy" for the potatoes and the broccolini which were crisp and tasty. There was nothing left on my plate except a little bit of the gristle expected from a steak taken from Bob's. I also tasted some of my wife's halibut which she adored. It was cooked to perfection and had just the right amount of cilantro flavor. (Although I can't get too much of that on non-shellfish seafood) I had to cut her off after 5 oz of my steak. I don't know if I can get through the whole menu because I may have to keep coming back to the surf and turf.