Senior Account Manager, Carol Ann Shigo wants you to take advantage of the fresh ingredients, plentiful portions, and great energy at her contemporary pick, serving up delicious and inventive meals.

You won't want to put your fork down at this trendy enclave.

It's located in Fort Lauderdale, and it's called Heritage.

Hi, I'm Rino Cerbone, and I'm the Chef/Owner of Heritage in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Heritage is a concept that's very, very true to me.

I wanted to take some of the oldest recipes I had from my parents and my grandparents, and kind of present 'em in my way.

You know, I wasn't reinventing the wheel, I just wanted to put my spin on things, but not really change the essence of what was really going on.

The menu over here, it's very focused.

It's always a small menu.

It's not crazy large, like you've see in these other places.

The reason for that is because I want everything to be strong.

Instead of having a menu with a lot of things, we have a smaller menu, that everything is executed precise and awesome.

The ambiance of the place is very reflective of my personality.

It's a little bit rough around the edges with the garage doors and the exposed beams, and the concrete, but also very clean lines, casual, fine dining-ish kind of thing.

That was all by design.

You know, it's very reflective of who I am.

The area that we're in is an area called FAT Village, Fine Arts and Technology District.

The location that I'm in now, even when I came up with the concept, it was not the raddest place to be, but I saw the potential, and I knew it was gonna be something special.

What I want my guests to say when they're done dining here is, you know, they really care.

You know, you can tell that there's a lot of care that goes on here.

That's what I want them to take away from it.

You know, when they're in here, and they see it, and they feel it, they get it.

Heritage is a modern Italian restaurant that offers really cool, unique, fare that you're not gonna get anywhere else.

Carol Ann, tell me a little bit about this neighborhood, because it's so funky, right?

It's the Flagler Funky, it's Flagler Village.

It's warehouses that are, it's almost like a phoenix coming from the ashes.

It's neat.

So it has a lot of character.

Richard, what did you think when you walked in?

I found that it's definitely very chic inside.

It had a very industrial look.

It had beautiful black walls surrounded by these black and white photographs.

The mugshots.

Of mugshots, yeah the mugshots is what draws your attention the moment you come in.

You see mugshots of David Bowie and Sinatra.

So you know, you're gonna go into a place where you're gonna have a great meal, but also at the same time have a great, just very eclectic sort of experience at the same time.

So tell me about this last time you went, what you had.

Oh, wow we had a lot.

The squash blossom.

[Michelle] Oh, my favorite food.

Oh my god, it was a stuffed squash blossom, and it was lightly fried.

[Michelle] Did they stuff it with cheese by chance?

Yes, oh my gosh.

The combination was just beautiful.

Every presentation of every dish, everything was meant to be a certain way, and it was beautiful.

You also had a black mushroom arancini.

Yes, very earthy tasting, very substantial.

The presentation, these round black balls came out.

It's a plate with the flowers on top, and so it's [Michelle] So arancini is usually a rice ball.

It was rice, it was very, it's a dense rice.

So it was filling.

[Michelle] I bet, it's kind of like a croquetta with rice on the inside.

Right, we shared a lot.

So we brought a lot home too.

And you had a malfadin bolognese, I believe.

We did, we had the bolognese, which was filled with meat.

The sauce was, I mean, you could tell the pasta was handmade.

Then, we had a chocolate and peanut butter budino.

Okay, budino.

Budino pudding.

Budino pudding, oh my goodness.

[Michelle] An Italian pudding.

Oh, oh my goodness.

I honestly, I can't even tell you, it was made by angels.

It was that good.

Richard, you also started with squash blossoms, correct?

Yes we came with a group of friends, and we decided we were gonna try to order the house in terms of the menu, so we could try a little bit of everything.

The squash blossoms were delicious.

It had like a nice tempura-like crispiness to it.

[Michelle] Any sauce?

It was over a marinara sauce and slightly sweet, but just very creative and inventive, the flavors.

We noticed that with all of the dishes, and we followed that with the calamari, as well.

And that had a sweet and sour sauce.

[Michelle] Adidocci.

[Richard] Yes, fantastic, fantastic.

That was actually one of my favorite orders.

[Michelle] Was it?

Yes, it was good.

[Michelle] And the Calamari was fried, I would guess.

It was, yes, it was fried, plentiful portions.

You definitely will not leave hungry in terms of the size of the portions, it's great.

Right, right well that's always good.

Main course?

So we tried two pizzas and we also had two pasta dishes.

We also had the bolognese, which, very hearty.

It had a nice smokey flavor to it.

And I ordered the bucatini pasta, that was with a clam sauce.

The clams were quite meaty.

[Michelle] That's actually my breaking point.

I love pasta with clams.

[Richard] It was delicious and very hearty portions, and nice garlic flavor to it.

Maria.

So we started off with the Italian chopped salad, which was just amazing.

It had little cubes of salami and provolone, and then all the yumminess, everything just chopped up, and already with the dressing and everything on there.

And then we tried two pastas.

One of them was the gnocchi with the pesto sauce.

That was just amazing.

[Michelle] Was it potato gnocchi, do you know?

[Maria] Potato gnocchi.

Very, very, very good.

Tell me what you think about prices.

I really think that the prices were very fair for the amount of food you got.

I would agree.

I agree.

Definitely.

For the quality ingredients The quality ingredients, the quality of ingredients is totally worth it.

Carol Ann, sum it up for me.

It's just a fun, fabulous place.

You go, you have a good time, you have look at the walls and you leave full.

Richard.

It's a chic restaurant, and if you want a place with hearty portions where you can reconnect with friends, it's the place to go.

Maria.

Fresh, delicious food and excellent service.

Definitely be back.

Well, you can enjoy the contemporary dishes and trendy atmosphere of Heritage, located at 903 Northeast Fifth Avenue in Fort Lauderdale.

They're open for lunch and dinner, Wednesday to Sunday.

Reservations are accepted, where the average price for dinner without drinks is about $50.