Ovlo Eats, a fine-dining casual hybrid, opens in April

Ovlo Eats in Plantation, a contemporary eatery opening in mid-April, will serve its roasted Duroc pork two ways: in a photogenic sandwich or on a photogenic dish, plated with house-made mojo-mustard sauce and two sides.

The menu will boast 27 items, a lineup so lean you might forget that nearly everything else at Ovlo Eats is do-it-yourself. Diners must order from counters and scout their own tables. There will be a self-serve water station, but also staff bussing orders and clearing food. Dishes will fly out of the kitchen within 10 minutes, but fresh ingredients will be plated tastefully on fine dinnerware.

A cut above fast-casual but not exactly fine dining, the 56-seat Ovlo Eats at 7626 Peters Road in Plantation will tout an Instagramfriendly dining room, a tight menu and fast service without the stuffy formality of a highend eatery, co-owner Steve Stolberg says.

Stolberg says he, chef Jeremy Shelton and partner Josh Bernstein spent two years refining the menu, taking the fast-fine dining idea from an experimental restaurant trend he spotted in San Francisco. When it opens, it will occupy a crowded culinary stretch of University Drive, a hair north of I-595 and the high-traffic education hub that includes Nova Southeastern University and Broward College.

“It’s the antithesis of those build-yourown-bowl restaurants where you point to rows of proteins and veggies at the counter,” Stolberg says. “The salads and sandwiches are already curated with the idea of getting dishes out of the kitchen in less than 10 minutes. We had to build recipes and packaging to make the food taste as good inside the restaurant as it does 45 minutes later with a to-go order.”

This is Stolberg’s first restaurant – previous stints include eight years teaching entrepreneurship at the University of Florida – but Ovlo Eats comes with prestige. Shelton has worked at Steak 954 in Fort Lauderdale, Michael Mina’s Bourbon Steak Miami and at Buccan, the small-plates café in Palm Beach run by James Beard Award-nominated chef Clay Conley.

The menu includes 14 pre-made sandwiches and salads, including the Chicken and Black Bean Hummus sandwich with herb grilled chicken breast, heirloom tomatoes and Greek yogurt aioli on multigrain bread from Miami’s Sullivan Street Bakery; and the Ovlo Bahn Mi, with lemongrass-roasted carrots, pickled cucumbers, kimchi mustard and eel sauce on Strecci baguette. Each dish is customizable, and diners can add or subtract proteins, which include herb-grilled chicken, herb-grilled steak, lemongrass-roasted shrimp and roasted Duroc pork.

The same proteins can be found in Ovlo Eats’ five entrées, including grilled chicken breast and grilled Atlantic salmon. There are 14 sides, including crispy Brussels sprouts, jicama slaw, curried lentils and Not French Fries, or fingerling potatoes smashed like tostones and then fried crispy.

Ovlo Eats will serve lunch and dinner daily in a sunlit dining room with whitewashed walls, exposed brick walls and brown leather banquettes. Online and take-out orders will be available, with delivery service to come.

For more information, call 954-302-3750 or go to OvloEats.com.

OVLO EATS/COURTESY A herb-grilled steak entree with crushed and fried fingerling potatoes and a Caesar salad are some of the things available at Ovlo Eats.