Amanda L.
Yelp
I've heard a lot of great things about Cantoro Italian Market and Trattoria from a bunch of my friends, especially the Italian American ones, so I knew this place was going to be good and authentic! The market portion of Cantoro's truly is impressive - it definitely skews very "artisanal," so you're going to find a lot of unique things here that you might not normally find at your run-of-the-mill grocery store and I always delight in this! There were fresh made pastas, meats, cheese and deli counter, etc. So many goodies here that were all reasonably priced as well. I just wish the market wasn't so far from me in Plymouth!
As for Cantoro Trattoria, my experience was a little less impressive. We got to the restaurant right when they opened up, but they were already fully booked for the entire night, so they said our wait would be 4 hours (!!) for a table. Holy smokes! They said for seats at the bar, which served the full kitchen menu, it would be more of a 30-45 minute wait, so we put our names down for that and sure enough, it didn't take much longer than 30 minutes.
Their menu wasn't too big, which I appreciate because that normally means they have the dishes that they make really well and don't need to provide more than that. I also really liked that their kitchen was located within the market area, so as you were shopping, you'd see all the cooks cooking the dishes for the Trattoria behind the hot foods counter - such a great use of space!
The food portions were MASSIVE, which I appreciate and think it's definitely worth the value. Between my friend and I, we ordered 3 dishes (1 insalate - salad - 1 primi - all pastas - and 1 secondi - their meat-based entrees), the rucola e parmigiano (arugula and cheese combined together - so simple and so refreshing and delicious!), the orecchiette barse (love orecchiette pasta, both the pasta and sausage was house made, the flavoring here though tasted a tad weird to me and the textures were a bit off for me as well, but it was still decent), the risotto capesante e zucca (scallops and cheesy risotto! so delicious, my favorite dish of the meal), and the tartufo e zucca pizza. We got the tiramisu for dessert to split and that was very delicious and a perfect balance of all the flavors and ingredients. This is probably one of the better tiramisu's I've had.
For the pizza, they brought out the incorrect one, I think we ended up getting the diavola pizza and it wasn't what we had ordered. My friend had taken one piece and eaten it and realized it wasn't what we had ordered. When we told the bartender to verify if it was incorrect, she went to check and realized that yes, it was the incorrect one. She then asked if we still wanted her to have them make the tartufo, and since all the food arrived in bigger portions than we had imagined, we said no. The pizza though was not great in my opinion either, the meats were really thick and again, there was an odd taste to it I wasn't expecting.
All in all, we know we could've ordered less for two people, so what Cantoro's Trattoria has going for it is its portions. But from the dishes we ordered, I was disappointed overall in the taste, despite appreciating that they used a lot of ingredients you don't normally see in restaurants. I would order the simple salad and risotto again, but nothing else from what we ordered this time, and given the drive distance too, I would hesitate to make the trek out here again to try it all again because I don't think it'd be worth it. To add insult to injury, they ended up charging us for the pizza, even though it was the incorrect one... That seems pretty ridiculous. If I ever come back here again, it'll predominantly only be to shop at the market and not to dine.