Acqua Café in Palm Beach expands services to include lunch on weekdays, brunch on weekends

M.M. Cloutier
·2 min read
Avocado toast is among menu items offered at Acqua Cafe's new weekend brunch service. Photo courtesy Acqua Cafe.
Avocado toast is among menu items offered at Acqua Cafe's new weekend brunch service. Photo courtesy Acqua Cafe.

Serving its Mediterranean-style “coastal cuisine,” the South End’s popular Acqua Café expanded this month by adding lunch and brunch to its repertoire.

Lunch on weekdays and brunch on Saturdays and Sundays are served from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

With indoor and covered-patio seating, Acqua — known for its seafood dishes and house-made pastas by executive chef and Italy native Pierangelo Badioli — has been serving dinner since its January 2020 debut.

Not long after first opening its doors, Acqua (a sister to Renato’s, Pizza al Fresco and Al Fresco) debuted lunch service, but it was then cut short because of the then-rise of the pandemic, which reshuffled Acqua’s original plans.

“Adding lunch and brunch was always part of the plan, but doing so again now has everything to do with our guests asking for it,” Acqua co-owner Jose L. Duran told the Daily News on Wednesday.

“Timing is everything and we’ve just had so many guests this season asking if and/or when we might add lunch and brunch and I knew the timing was right, so we started this past weekend with a soft opening.”

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Acqua’s new lunch menu features appetizers from $12 to $18; salads from $16 to $30; and sandwiches and entrees from around $17 to $30. The brunch menu is similarly priced.

Lunch appetizers include fried calamari, truffle fries, corn “ribs” with paprika crème fraiche, and steamed Prince Edward Island mussels in white-wine tomato broth with crostini.

Appetizers on Acqua Café's new lunch menu include corn ribs.
Appetizers on Acqua Café's new lunch menu include corn ribs.

Cobb, Caesar and lobster are among the large salads.

Sandwiches and main courses include a grilled mahi mahi sandwich, an Acqua Burger, pizza marguerita and pan-roasted Scottish salmon with honey-Dijon mustard sauce and sweet-potato mash.

The weekend brunch menu features some of those dishes, plus such other plates as shrimp cocktail, avocado toast, eggs Benedict, Nutella crepes, and smoked salmon with crème fraiche, red onion, crispy capers and crostini.

Cobb salad is among the items on the lunch menu at Acqua Café.
Cobb salad is among the items on the lunch menu at Acqua Café.

Acqua Café is on the ground floor of a retail, office and executive-suite building at 2875 S. Ocean Blvd. For more information, call 561-547-0005 or visit www.acquacafepb.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Acqua Café in Palm Beach adds lunch and brunch services