Tall glass vases of long-stemmed, deep-red roses grace the tables of Cavallo's, and there's also—always—a vase of roses in the kitchen, says chef Brondo Cavallo. Therein lies the story of this restaurant.
Dine in any of the five private dining rooms, over five to six courses served at a leisurely pace, and time seems to stand still. There's a classic Old World sensibility here, built on attention to detail and pleasures of the moment, a sensibility that fosters stopping to smell the roses, or at least see them—everywhere.
Cavallo's finds its home in a sprawling villa-like building—just off Route 611, minutes south of Easton—that was constructed piece by piece over decades. An eclectic collection of art and antiques fills every corner, and lingering aromas of simmering sauces and fresh-from-the-oven bread promise fine food and flavor.
Of course, tables are topped with white cloths. But that's just the beginning. Century-old, gold-encrusted Heinrich China chargers add gracious elegance, and regal red tapers, towering in ornate golden candelabras, invoke grandeur. Tiffany lights punctuate the interior landscape with brilliant jewel tones; imposing European-looking cupboards and large carved and upholstered chairs create an air of historic charm. Wandering through Cavallo's is akin to a treasure hunt.
At the heart of its treasure is the kitchen—a kitchen that quickly transports you to the French countryside. Gleaming copper pots in all sizes and shapes hang from the ceiling, and sauté pans, filled with vegetables and aromatics, hiss on the massive stove lining one side of the long, narrow room. From here, the restaurant's heartbeat, comes a cuisine that blends classic French and Italian fare, prepared with tried-and-true techniques. Diners choose appetizer and entrée selections; the other three to four courses are chef's choice, so dinner becomes its own journey discovering treasures of taste.
Onion soup's stock, dark with concentrated flavor, infuses meltingly tender pieces of onion. Chunks of beef shin add texture, and a peak of imported Pecorino Romano breaking the soup's surface shows focus on subtlety of flavor, not an overpowering layer of cheese so often found in onion soup. The bread is baguette style—golden, super crusty and studded with sesame seeds, a fine accompaniment to soup so savory.
A slice of summer memory is pizza rustica. Tomato sauce, obviously reduced to its flavor essence with basil and garlic, tops a thin homemade crust, dusted with textural sesame seeds, along with a spiral slice of caramelized onion and sliver of fresh tomato. Were summer tomatoes really as good as this?
Winning contrast sets up crisped, grilled sausage against a large square of tender homemade ravioli filled with mellow winter melon (squash) in a pasta course. Topped with sauce—a mélange of porcini mushrooms, Moscato grapes and cranberries—the ravioli brings earthy and gentle sweet notes to the plate.
Ricotta al forno—Cavallo's homemade ricotta, roasted with cracked black pepper imparting a hint of lingering heat—is paired with a perfect prawn, precisely cooked to optimum tenderness, and a leaf of endive stuffed with roasted squash, eggplant, onion and garlic, touched judiciously with capers.
Of the main courses—osso buco, chateaubriand, lamb, sea bass and lobster—double roasted duck with raspberry glaze is a wise selection. The sticky-sweet glaze glistens on the fowl's crisped skin, its fruity essence balancing the duck's complexity, bringing new meaning to “finger-lickin' good.” Candied yam and roasted potato round out the plate along with a roasted mushroom scored to look like a flower.
Perhaps saving the best for last, Grand Marnier chocolate soufflé is the meal's pièce de résistance—the dark chocolate soufflé's pillowy plateau, dusted with confectioners' sugar, rising far above its white bowl. What a conundrum is this classic dessert, with its texture at once light and airy, yet dense with deep, dark and intense chocolate flavor. Paired with raspberry sauce and Madagascar vanilla whipped cream, which add clean fruit notes and textural contrast, this picture of sweet perfection delights in many ways.
Surprises come at every turn at Cavallo's. Perhaps it's one of the chef's-choice courses, or the discovery of a grand, shining silver punch bowl while meandering through dining rooms. Perhaps it's the circular marble steps in the tower room or the portrait gallery filled with paintings of Brondo, his parents, siblings and grandparents by Antonio Salemme, who was a family friend. Or, during a tour of the restaurant, perhaps it's a roaming server's offer of bacon-wrapped dates—delectably warm and chewy with smoky, salty sweetness.
Stories come at every turn as well. People come from everywhere to dine at the restaurant, Brondo says. “[They] fly in for dinner. I love when they stay here. I like to make them breakfast, tell them stories.” A few favorites: when Luciano Pavarotti visited, conversation and camaraderie filled the dining room until he and his entourage left at 5:30 a.m.; and when David Bowie ate at Cavallo's, he tried repeatedly—but unsuccessfully—to convince Brondo's mother, Shirley, to sell him an intricately carved antique desk from England with lots of intriguing secret compartments.
Stories about the restaurant's provenance prove fascinating. Brondo's father, a chiropractor who treated race horses and other animals along with people, bought the 114-acre property in the late 1950s. In 1976, he moved a horse tack shop, rolling it on logs, from the barn to today's restaurant location, where it became a roadside stand called The Country Cottage. Shirley sold sausage sandwiches on homemade bread there, serving at tables with blue gingham cloths.
Plumbing came next, then a porch, which became the first restaurant in the 1980s. A bistro room with a wood-fired pizza oven and coffee bar was added around 1990; the tower room and a specialty dining room with a spit fireplace were added around this time as well.
Shirley was a force of nature, filling the restaurant with her passions for antiques, copper pots, objets d'art and art in general until it became a retrospective of her travels and pursuits. On a trip to Palermo, Italy, she came across horse, donkey and goat carts painted in a vibrant folk-art style that had been used in cultural shows and processions. She “charmed” the owner into selling them to her—armature, plumes and all—even though it was generally understood this regional folk art should remain in Palermo. Today the carts bring their own charm to the restaurant's dining rooms.
Treasures from Lehigh Valley history made it into Shirley's collections, too: a golden clock and life-sized gold frame from Hess's French Room; two conference room tables from Martin Tower; ceiling beams from the first church building of Easton's Lebanese community; and the kitchen's range hood that hails from the Dixie Cup factory's second-floor cafeteria in Easton.
Shirley's major passion for food played out in cooking: she studied with chefs Julie Dannenbaum and Jacques Pépin, among others, and served as one of the first guest chefs at the James Beard House in New York City. She taught Brondo everything she knew; he also studied cooking, food and hospitality at Penn State, at Italy's University of Bologna and at a restaurant in Naples, Italy.
He's been “cooking,” he says, since he was five, when his job was squeezing oranges for juice and washing dishes that were never-ending—and still are. “I can do 1,000 things at once,” says Brondo, “and it all gets done.”
Since Shirley passed away in 2020, Brondo has adjusted to being chef de cuisine. “I want to keep things exactly the same,” he says. “I like tradition.” His garden, from which he harvests watercress, herbs, tomato, squash, burdock root and okra, is inspired by the garden his mother always grew.
As before, dinner at Cavallo's takes up several hours. “We have to make sure no one is in a rush,” Brondo says. “We try to make a unique experience.”
The restaurant has never advertised, and that's not about to change, either. “We were always word of mouth; the right people always find us,” he says. “There are still people out there looking for something different, something special and homemade.”
And that's the tradition he seeks to carry on, the tradition of filling the restaurant with roses and Old World comfort and conversation—the tradition created by his parents as they built Cavallo's. “I wake up every day with the idea that I am living my dream,” says Brondo, “but I want to make my mother and father proud.”
Brondo Cavallo Restaurant
510 S. Delaware Dr., Easton | 610.252.2500 | cavallos.us
Hours
Dinner only Thurs.–Mon., starting at 5 p.m.
Cost: $175 PP prepaid by credit card or mailed check.
Parking: Ample parking in lot at restaurant.
Reservations: Required in advance.
Published as “Inside Dish” in the March 2024 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
