Learn To Speak Italian Here In Dallas

One of our most popular offerings at the Italian Club Dallas is our Italian Language Classes and our next series of classes are set to begin the week of April 18, 2011.

At the Italian Club we offer 5 levels of classes ranging from Beginner to Advanced Conversation.  The courses are 10-weeks long and are they are taught by professionals from the major universities here in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area.  

Our courses are designed as a progression so whenever you begin a series, you can continue them through the stages on a continual basis.  If you follow the program you can gain a solid knowledge of the Italian language in just over 1 year.

Most of the newer members of our classes begin at the Beginner I level.  This is our introductory course and teaches the basics of the Italian language: basic grammar, listening, reading, writing and speaking. It is intended for those brand new to the language.  As the classes progress you’ll be introduced to verb conjugation, tenses and ultimately to a conversational level of Italian.

Personally I discovered the Italian Club Dallas by first taking language classes there and I have since had many opportunities to test my knowledge in remote areas of Italy where little to no English is spoken.  While I’m no master of the Italian language yet, I could certainly hold my own using what I learned through the ICD classes.  On top of that I made some really great friends while taking the classes so overall it was a very rewarding experience.

You can get more details on all of our classes on the Italian Language School section of our website.

A Week In The Life Of The Italian Club Dallas

A friend of mine emailed me last week asking about the Italian Club and the activities we offer.  “Wow” I thought… how do I answer that one in less than a few thousand words?  Rather than try to answer, I thought instead that I would blog it for all to see so here is what the last week at the Italian Club Dallas looked like.

Thursday

11:30am – We’re open to the public for a good lunch crowd offering a 4-course meal for $14… the best deal in town!

7:00pm – 2 separate weekly language classes are held at the Club – tonight it was Advanced Italian Conversation and Intermediate Italian Language.

Friday

11:30am – We’re again open for lunch

7:00pm – Our Weekly Cena (evening meal) is held and this week, the 4^th Friday of a month is our Entertainment Cena where we have live entertainment during the multi-course meal

Saturday

9:30am – Our weekly children’s language class begins at the Club

10:30am – Some of our members attend a Club organized tour of the Kimbell Art Museum’s Salvatore Rosa Exhibit.  This follows the lecture we recently had at the Club by the Curator of European Art from the Kimbell.

10:30am – Also at 10:30am back at the Club our weekly Children’s Italian Dance Lessons begin

12:00pm – We’re at NorthPark Mall and the “ArtsPark” Arts and Cultural Fair helping to educate visitors about Italy and the Club’s activities

Sunday

5:30pm – at the Club, we host a Book Signing & Wine Tasting with Robert Camuto the Author of "Palmento", a great book about a Sicilian wine odyssey

Monday

7:00pm – Monday is a dark day for lunch but on Monday night we held 3 weekly classes – Adult/Teen Italian Dance Rehearsal, Italian Language for Beginners I and Italian Language for Beginners III

Tuesday

11:30am – A quite day with our lunch being the only calendar event for the day

Wednesday

11:30am – We’re open for lunch

7:00pm – We offer our Weekly Pasta/Pizza Night

7:00pm – During Pasta night we offer a lecture by the Assistant Curator from the Meadows Art Museum titled "The Lost Manuscripts of the Sistine Chapel ~ An Epic Journey from Rome to Toledo"

So to my friend Paul, that’s what a week at the Italian Club Dallas looks like.  In the coming weeks we’ll have more lectures and lessons, cooking classes, our bocce league and club outings such as a RoughRiders game.  Those are all in addition to our daily lunches and our weekly Wednesday and Friday night meals.  On top of those we’ll have our monthly Regional Cena (this month featuring Liguria), an Easter Egg Hunt for the children and our annual Pasqua (Easter) Sunday Brunch.

You can get a weekly look at events here and you can find everything on the calendar on our website and I hope I answered your question! 

What I Love About The Italian Club Dallas

I received an email today asking me about the Club from an Italian who grew up in my home town in upstate New York and who just relocated to Dallas from Chicago.  It got me thinking.  Now as the President of the Italian Club of Dallas you might at first think this is my “responsibilities” talking… but it’s really not… this is about my roots and about my passion.

I was raised in a large Italian family in Binghamton, New York.  Every Sunday from when I can barely remember to when I left for college we would go to my Nana and Pop Pop’s house where our entire family would gather and sit at the table for hours eating a full 7-course meal all made from scratch by my Nana.  My Grandfather, and his 5 brothers and sisters, all emigrated from the Abruzzo region of Italy so when our family gathered it was quite an undertaking… on a weekly basis.

I first discovered the Italian Club Dallas while looking for Italian language lessons in the area.  I had just completed my 12^th trip to Italy and knew I needed to learn the language better before my upcoming 13^th trip.  One of my side interests has been researching my family history in Abruzzo and when I research there now, I work in small local churches with historical records dating back to the early 1500s.  Rarely do I encounter people that speak English in the areas I now visit so I needed to learn and the ICD gave me some really great classes to do that.

Taking the classes grew into attending some of the Club’s events, mainly our Friday night Cenas (evening meals).  At first I’d occasionally go with some of my language classmates but over time, the people of the ICD have become my extended Italian family.  

What in my youth was Sunday afternoons at Nana’s house has now in my adulthood turned into Friday evenings at the ICD.

Myself (in green) with some Club Members at Taste Addison

If you’ve never attended an event at the ICD but you are curious, I invite you to send me an email and to please join me and our family for a Cena on a Friday night to experience the ICD.  Or better yet, as we say in our marketing efforts, to “Come To Your Italian Senses”.

Our tables always end up being large groups of friends… both old and new… and we share good food, good wine, lots of laughter (did I mention LOTS?!) and often times the nights end on the patio with maybe a limoncello and a cigar or a friendly card game at the tables inside.  The friends I have made through the Club are now some of my closest friends in Dallas and the new people I have met in just a short time as President of the Club are really wonderful new additions to my life.

I know it might sound hokey, especially living in Dallas… but at the Italian Club Dallas we are a family.  We’ve almost all relocated to Dallas from elsewhere, both in the United States and from Italy, but we all share a common bond of Italian ancestry… or even for our non-Italian members and guests… we simply share a passion for a country that is full of passion.

When we introduced our new marketing campaign to our membership last fall, we presented some copy that I still feel captures us so well.  Please read it, feel it, enjoy it and then come experience it with us!

You open the door and your senses come alive.

The smell of garlic, tomatoes, basil; of something wonderful

being prepared in the kitchen by a skilled and passionate chef.

The sight of friendly faces welcoming you in.

The pop of a cork from a freshly opened bottle of wine,

the musical clink of glasses raised in a toast,

the earsplitting sound of laughter, music, friendship and joy fill the air, taking you back to a place

that once, many years ago, you called home.

Some call this hospitality. We call it famiglia.

This is what real Italian feels like. The colors are brighter.

The tastes are better. The world is a more beautiful place.

So come...Come To Your Italian Senses.

iPad + Flipboard + ICD = Content

This is one for the tech types and the iPad & iPad 2 owners out there.

One of the coolest apps that I have on my iPad is a free app called Flipboard.  Flipboard is a personalized, social magazine that gathers content that I choose and it presents it all in one app in a very user friendly, magazine style format.  The content options range from local, national and international newspapers to magazines to weather, blogs I follow, my personal Facebook and Twitter accounts and even pages with Italian recipes.  Each morning over my coffee, I open Flipboard first and I catch up on many various news, media and social sources all in one place and presented in a very friendly magazine style format.

Did you know you can add the Italian Club of Dallas to your Flipboard content?

It’s simple to do.  In Flipboard, click “Add a Section” and type in Italian Club Dallas and you’ll find us in the Facebook Pages section and then you simply add us.

Flipboard pulls the content from our ICD Facebook page which we populate daily with timely information both about the Club and our activities and also with timely and relevant news and happenings from Italy. 

While we have almost 350 followers on Facebook, I know not all of our members and guests use Facebook so if you have an iPad and want to stay very current with our happenings, I encourage you to use Flipboard or if you already have it, to add us to your own personalized contents.

It’s Going To Be A Battle… Of The Bottles!

Temperate climate, beautiful terraced hillsides festooned with vines heavy with grapes, breathtaking stone estates where the best wine in the world is carefully crafted.  

You must be Tuscany, right?  

But wait… could it be the Napa Valley?  

Debate has long raged as to who produces the most sophisticated and palate-friendly wines, Italy or California.  (Yes, France is excellent as well, but we’ll leave that discussion for another time!)   Who can decide?  

On March 22 at the Italian Club Dallas we can let you be the judge!

We’re excited to be hosting Round I of our Battle of the Bottles pitting Italian wines vs. California wines and we’re making a great event out of it!

Attendees will enjoy a wonderful multi-course dinner prepared by our own Chef Tommaso and each course will be accompanied by two wine “samples” ~ one from Italy and one from California.  The menu will be Antipasto ~ Seafood Salad ~ Pasta Bolognese ~ Lamb Chops ~ and Chocolate Mousse with Berries. And the wines… well you have to decide which is which and the answers will be revealed at the end of the evening.  

Elsa Ricchi, Export Manager for Casale del Giglio wines will take the lead on the Italian side, and Oak Cliff Cellars’ Jim Richardson will represent California.  They will offer a description of each wine, delineating its history, describing what flavor notes to expect as you sample it, and providing its retail availability locally.  There will also be a purchasing opportunity at the end of the evening.

This event promises to be a culinary delight and reservations for it are required and can be made here.

We hope to see you on March 22 at the Battle!

Our Regional Cenas

Our Regional Cenas which I wrote about earlier this week have proved to be one of our most popular new offerings for 2011… so popular in fact that we’ve sold out each one of them.

Tonight’s Cena featuring Sicilia sold out quickly.  If you call the Club today at (972) 931-9167, Vito can place your name on a waiting list in the event of cancellations during the day today.

Moving forward, I thought I’d share the list of our upcoming Regional Cenas.  Reservations can be made in advance for any of these special Cenas through our website so don’t be left out for these special events during which you’ll have an opportunity to experience a culinary, cultural and educational experience exploring each of the 20 wonderful and unique regions of Italy.

2011 Regional Cena Schedule

Friday, April 8 – Liguria

Friday, May 13 – Toscana

Friday, June 10 – Abruzzo

Friday, July 8 – Umbria

Friday, August 12 – Sardegna

Friday, September 9 – Campania

Friday, October 14 – Basilicata

Friday, November 11 - Emilia Romagna (& Veterans Appreciation)

Friday, December 9 - Friuli-Venezia Giulia 

Regional Cena: Sicilia

Each Friday night at the Italian Club we offer Cena or "Evening Meal".  Cena is our most popular weekly culinary offering and it always grows into large tables of friends both old and new sharing a delicious meal prepared by Chef Tomasso, good wines and lots of stories and laughter.  It truly is just like an evening at the dinner table with the Italian families many of us were raised in.


Beginning in January 2011, on the 2nd Friday of each month, we started offering Regional Cenas.  Over the course of 20 months we are exploring the 20 different regions of Italy with a menu that is prepared and wines selected that are specific to the region.  In addition we produce a detailed, multi-page brochure full of information about the selected region and our dance troupe I Colori perform dance numbers specific to the region.  This event has been hugely popular and it sells out each month.

This week, March 9-11, 2011 is our third regional offering:

Sicilia.

We kick the week of with a wine tasting during our Pasta/Pizza Night on Wednesday evening (March 9, 2011) and we pay it off at Cena on Friday night.  With many Sicilians as members of the club and with the popularity of the region in Italian culture, this Cena will be one you won't want to miss!


On Wednesday night (March 9) we'll be offering 8 different Sicilian wines for tasting and reservations and a listing of them can be found here.


On Friday night (March 11), our Sicilian menu is listed below and reservations, which are required, can be made here. 

Caponata, Arancini, Polpettine e Focaccia

 Pasta al Forno alla Siciliana

Baked Pasta with Eggplant Sicilian Style

Pesce Spada alla Mondello

Grilled Swordfish Mondello Style

Cannoli con Cioccolata di Modica

Cannoli with Dark Chocolate from Modica

We invite you to "Come To Your Italian Senses" with us this week as we explore the beautiful region of Sicilia!

Reservations for Cena (Required) can be made 

HERE.

Private Events at the Italian Club Dallas

The Italian Club Dallas is a unique facility in Addison, Texas that offers something special you might want to keep in mind… hosting Private Events.

Our Club was painstakingly designed and built with a elegant Italian touch that exceeds other area restaurants and while it serves as the home base for our members and our activities, we’re not open every night of the week and when we’re not, we rent our facility out to private groups.

Our Club has hosted everything from family birthday parties to wedding receptions to cocktail receptions to elegant dinners and our Club is available most days of the week as well as on weekends.

Earlier this week we hosted a national financial services institution's event for their key customers.

As they say, the proof is in the pudding (La prova è nel budino) and here is the feedback we received from them about their event we hosted this week at the Club ~ “…the service was much better at the (Italian) Club than at programs we have held at other facilities -- much quieter, faster, and less intrusive -- The food was excellent and my colleagues were very complimentary of the facility --  I received many glowing comments from my clients about the (Italian) Club, the atmosphere, the food, and the (Club's) upcoming events.”

With so many choices in Addison, most of which will place you into a large room while they still serve their public audience, our Club can be privately yours and we can host groups from a few people to 140.  Our Chef Tomasso works with each of our private groups to prepare an authentic Italian meal and wine selection that will meet you budget requirements.  Be it a simple reception with antipasti or an elaborate multi-course culinary experience, Chef Tomasso and the Club will not only please but “delight’ your private group. 

Supporting your presentation needs we have a large screen projection system and a quality sound system already built into our facility which is included for your use in the rental cost!

If you would like to inquire about hosting a private event at the Club, we have a simple form that you can fill out to receive more information and you can find it by clicking here on our website.

For a truly authentic Italian alternative for hosting your private events, think about the Italian Club Dallas and “Come To Your Italian Senses!”