Brandon C.
Yelp
4 stars for the food, minus 2 stars for almost killing Mom twice on her birthday, minus 1 star for the leftover packaging exploding in my car because the to-go container wasn't crimped on correctly.
Well, I wish the whole "killing Mom twice" thing was hyperbole but I explicitly mentioned on the reservation that she has allergies to nuts. We started with the charcuterie/antipasto platter and there was a pile of pecans (or something similar, they were coated) that was touching other food. If they were in a separate bowl, that would have been fine. I brought this to the attention of the staff, and they very apologetically, removed the board and brought us a new one. Unfortunately the platter still contained mortadella. Fun tidbit, mort means death in Latin, the progenitor of the Romance languages. Mortadella doesn't refer to anything death related, etymologically. Anyways, they were folded up to look particularly presentable and unfortunately hid the pistachios. I've had mortadella with and without pistachios before and I figured after the first mishap, the mortadella was simply one without nuts. Alas, no. Luckily, I like the stuff and Mom doesn't so I went in only to discover the pistachios and warned her away from it. Out of caution, she also avoided the what I assume to be Calabrese salami (mostly because it was spicy) that the mortadella was leaning onto. I wish the waiter explained the different components on the platter but the prosciutto was good and easily identifiable.
Mentioning the platter, everything else was tasty, ranging from the prosciutto to the olives. The fig jam was nice though I thought the cheeses were too similar in general, lacking a soft cheese of any kind. Had we gotten an explanation, we probably could have had more curated bites.
When we sat down, we got bread with chimichurri/gremolata. The dipping sauce was delicious and quite assertive in flavor--I was scooping that stuff out with my knife.
One entree we ordered was the Brevi Costole, linguine with short ribs. The pasta was cooked well with a good bite to it. Pasta and noodles really are best when they adhere to Newton's Third Law and fight with your teeth a bit. The braised short ribs were shredded and mixed well with the dish as a whole.
Cioppino was also ordered. The same bread rusks that we had with the antipasto plate appeared here too, to help sop up the remaining sauce. Overall, it was spicy, delicious, and packed with non-fish seafood. Unfortunately, the rain today broke the structural integrety of the bag, and a fall of about 2 inches caused the remains to spill all over my car. Hopefully any remaining smells of decaying seafood don't remain there or else I'll have to spray some fragrance into my car until the rain lets up and I can deep clean part of the interior.
I ordered the veal Osso Bucco as well, with saffron risotto. It even came with a slightly oversized marrow fork! Mixing the marrow into the creamy risotto was great. The veal itself was a bit dry, but the flavors were overall quite excellent.
We brought our own wine which they corked for us for $25. Not too bad of a corkage fee. The wine was pretty old so they decanted it for us. Unfortunately the bottle wasn't brought back, but to be fair, we also forgot to ask for it back. It was an old 1982 wine and I like to keep bottles of the rarer stuff I drink. Maybe I'm weird. No, I'm definitely weird, but not because I like to hold onto old wine bottles.
In the end they gave Mom a panna cotta smothered in blackberry jam and even had a candle by it! Hands down very delicious. It tasted incredibly creamy and with a great amount of gelatin to give it some body. If I wasn't taking my parents out for dinner, I would have played with my food a bit and smacked the panna cotta with the spoon to watch it jiggle. This was comped for the celebration (and brought to us without asking!), which I appreciate, and the server even assured us this didn't have nuts.
I always say that cooking with love is BS and you should cook with hate--that is--add so much butter in so that your guests have to buy a whole new wardrobe because they gained so much weight. That doesn't extend to a possible hospital visit though, or death by anaphylactic asphyxiation.