Written by Jon Palmer Claridge on Monday, March 2, 2020 at 2:39 PM

It's spring training near Tampa Bay, and the Florida Grapefruit League is in full swing. Baseball is a team sport similar to running a restaurant. Every member of the team has a job and needs practice to hone their skills. This is a beautiful thing when everyone is working together.

Chef Chris Ponte is one of the perennial culinary all-stars in our area, with Cafe Ponte in Clearwater and On Swann in Hyde Park Village. His most recent career, Olivia, is a high-end Italian restaurant that showcases the care and consideration of a top chef/entrepreneur/coach. However, our weekend visit started with strikeouts.

We made a reservation and a friendly host greeted us and invited us to have a drink at the bar while we were waiting. Because we have to drink for dinner, we have objections. Five minutes passed. When the staff moved the table and reset it for the two larger parties, there was a buzz of activity. We are now 10 minutes. It looks interesting. Will that be our table? No, they are converting it to eight tops. I am very happy to see this place is crowded with diners and obviously enjoy their meals, but when we exceed 15 minutes, the hunger is swallowing. We were finally seated 20 minutes after the reserved time. But when the kitchen is ready to hit the ball, the team will unite.

Cicchetti is a delicious snack-style snack to start your dining adventure. They are leading batsmen and are designed to quickly whet your appetite so you can score as the game progresses. The arancini quintet reminds people why these fried rice balls are so popular. The breaded appearance is not the typical meat filling, but the surprising liquid center of quattro formaggi (four kinds of cheese), the creamy cheese pool is dotted with crushed pepper and chives, and surrounds a golden sphere.

Usually, the bright red carpaccio of the raw meat shop looks like the roof of the Italian Riviera, but the chef Ponte’s wagyu carpaccio trio is covered with delicious red beef slices on the parmesan puffs. Parmesan puffs float on a small puddle of zabaglione, a thin custard topped with truffles. Each one is dotted with chopped wild mushrooms and a small basil leaf is placed on it. The effect on the round-lip black plate is one of the cooking 3D "Pac-Man", Blinky brings the fast red ghost into the gourmet life.

Pasta and pizza are the main players in the lineup, which cannot be denied. I always start with Margherita Pizza (you may remember me in the 2015 Pizza Marathon) because there is nowhere to hide. It is just a drizzle of crust, cheese, sauce, basil and extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). Olivia’s Neapolitan-style pie with delicious leopard charcoal and a pleasantly rich, chewy crust will make you a real treat. It has a perfectly balanced tomato acidity, creamy thin fresh mozzarella cheese and a few wilted basil leaves. If I'm really picky, I want more basil, but this is a great pizza.

When you enter, you can't help but notice the window wall on your right, which allows you and the tireless white hat chef to create a series of handmade pasta waiting for diners. Bucatini, the kind of long tubular pasta, takes your taste buds on an intricate adventure, filled with smoked guanciale nuggets from tender pork cheeks, and a large amount of black pepper used to stimulate the spicy flavor to balance the cream Bacon sauce. My taster noticed that when the dish cooled, the pasta — although full of flavor — seemed to be drier, as if it needed more sauce.

Next is the powerful batter of the menu, from premium steaks to scallops with risotto. We chose exquisite and thick halibut fillets cooked in EVOO water. It swims with a bunch of bubbling grape tomatoes in a sea of ​​yellow tomato sugo (sauce). The island of verde fregula—a small pasta like Sardinian couscous—is covered with small peas on a stranded fish fillet, topped with stewed pepperoni and olives, plus a huge basil leaf. The whole thing. The combination of color, taste, and texture is an exhilarating home run.

Dolci is the closest to the menu, coming from the cowshed and ending the meal in a flourishing way. The apple butter cake was thrown too close to the head like a cracked finger fastball, turning the table over. We are all dizzy and moaning at the sweet fruit, with delicious vanilla bean ice cream balls on top, balanced by a thin chocolate cigarette, pointing towards the sky like a space telescope. Next to it is the sticky crescent of the most delicious brown butter caramel, the last salve to cure all discomforts.

Although the MLB franchise in the Bay Area may have just begun to condense, Olivia's kitchen team is ready for the playoffs.

CL food critic Jon Palmer Claridge is the oldest food critic in the Bay Area and dines anonymously at the time of the review. Check out his 2019 list of the 50 best restaurants in Tampa Bay, check out his explanation of the rating system and read his new book "Drink.More.Wine!"

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