A popular restaurant owner returns from New York to open in Keller/Southlake area
Davis Boulevard’s favorite restaurateur is back, and this time he’s serving seafood.
Emin “Nino” Rata, founder of nearby Mulino, has returned after a round trip to New York. His new restaurant is Acquario Italian Seafood, tucked into the back of a shopping center on the side facing Bear Creek Parkway.
Rata has 20 years’ experience in New York-area Italian restaurants, most recently in White Plains. His restaurants feel like cozy neighborhood pasta houses, so he always has a following from Keller and Southlake customers seeking someplace that doesn’t feel suburban.
Acquario accomplishes that, taking over a former pizza-and-pasta restaurant in the rear at 8849 Davis Blvd., south of Farm Road 1709.
It’s too soon to pass judgment, But so far, diners like the grilled octopus appetizer or crab cake, along with the steaks and salmon.
The menu features baked amberjack, parmesan-crusted cod and a shrimp-zucchini-crusted branzino, all familiar on New York-area menus but something different for Keller and Southlake.
“I just took a little detour to New York,” Rata said this week.
He chose the Keller-Southlake border because “I know the neighborhood,” he said.
It’s only a half-mile south of Mulino, which opened in 2017 to large crowds for hand-tossed pizzas and a Nutella pizza dessert.
Acquario’s chef is Ferdinando “Fredi” Plaku, a fellow Albanian coming from an Italian restaurant in coastal Connecticut.
Plaku moved from Albania to Venice, Italy, at a young age and had run a Venice-area seafood restaurant, Rata said.
“It was his idea to go with seafood,” Rata said.
Acquario opens nightly for dinner only; 817-431-8323, acquariorestaurant.com.
