Cibo Ristorante Italiano
301 Alvarado St., Monterey
(831) 649-8151
Music and dancing have always been the secret ingredients to accompany the Italian fare like cozze e vongole and pollo arrostito. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, 7-10pm, you get jazz with dinner. (Fridays and Saturdays it’s soul, funk and R&B.) To fuel the dancing and frivolity, Friday and Saturday there is a late-night pizza-and-panini menu until midnight, followed by a late happy hour until 1:30am. Afternoon happy hour accompanies live jazz the first and second Sunday of the month, 2-5pm. Food and music—most notably, sax player Roger Eddy, singer Andrea Carter and dynamic duo Lee Durley (vocals and percussion) and Joe Indence (keyboard)—go big here. With all that jazz going on, it looks like Cibo still rules the riffs.