Archive for the Italian Category

Piedmont is located on Foster Street in downtown Durham, North Carolina. As the pictures will attest, they believe in “locavore” dining.

The menu was a difficult proposition. Everything on the menu looked appetizing, from the appetizers, through fig-accompanied cheese, pastas, and down to the most simple of salads with local greens.

Located in a former warehouse, the restaurant faces a parking lot across the street, with large double-high windows that allow a lot of light into a whimsical space. A smaller number of tables are positioned upstairs, where I gather the best views may be had. Large flowers have been painted on the walls, and a portal window into the kitchen reminds us there are folks hard at work making delicious aromas pour forth from their kitchen.

I only wish they’d blind some of those windows.

Service was generally good, save for a service mistake (spilled sauce), but I honestly felt a little rushed at times. With such good food, it’s okay to relax. A bevy of waiting customers wasn’t waiting for our table.

Small focaccia rolls are served, which had a perfect texture, even though they may have lacked exotic flavors. I tried their simple farmer’s lettuce salad which was unadorned save for a most delicious roasted shallot dressing. Their charcuterie plate and the more daring summer veggie salad were also noted to be fine dishes off the first course list.

Entrées ordered included the papardelle with ragu and parmesan, the fisherman’s stew with seafood, and a squash and ricotta ravioli. The pastas both came in tomato-based sauces, the ragù heavy on beef and not tomato. This was exceptional, I think, because the meat was not ground. I’ve actually never eaten an Italian gravy that wasn’t made from some combination of ground Italian meats. Here, instead, the meat was toothsome, adding great texture to an already flavorful and aromatic pasta dish. I only wish the noodles were stronger to hold up to the sauce. Their fresh nature made them ever so slightly difficult to eat alongside the larger pieces of meat.

The seafood dishes went down quickly, with diners noting the exceptional sauce or gravy. Garlic toast was served to sop-up what remained. Spoons were employed where bread left off. Good stuff.

Dessert was not in the cards, but a personal promise to visit Piedmont another time is. Recommended for honest locavore fare in an upscale, but none-too-fussy understated dining room featuring Italian flavors.

Situated on Main Street in downtown South Boston, VA is Café Peroni, which has been on the scene for about a year. While this is full-service restaurant, with a excellent view through its large windows of Main Street, I am sorry to say we only sampled a very small portion of their offerings on multiple visits.

Coming in, on a late afternoon for a cool pick-me-up coffee drink, the waitstaff invited us to try their homemade (on premises) Italian-style gelato. With over 20 flavors, ranging from piña colada, melon, two types of orange, and a new flavor of jalapeño chocolate, we were enticed to take them up on the invitation.

They’ll give you free tastes, and I finally decided on a hauntingly good Sicilian-style pistachio. Its flavor reminded me of the incredible Zingerman’s-procured Sicilian pistachio spread from 2 years ago. Deep, sweet, and somehow, ultimately satisfying. The gelato texture was creamy and smooth. Exceptional, really.

While we visited twice for the coffee drinks, it was three times for the gelato. There are plenty of places to find ice cream, but should you find yourself in South Boston with an itch to slow down and take life a little easier, do check out the samples from the owners of Cafe Peroni. Their gelato and hospitality were both highlights of my travels.

It has been too long since I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Coppola’s Deli on Cary Street in Richmond.

My favorite sandwich is their “true Italian hero,” a simple sandwich on great bread featuring prosciutto di parma, mozzarella cheese, and pickled red sweet peppers. I usually salt the cheese, and I’d kill for a little EVOO, but otherwise, the sandwich is sublime. It goes especially well with some of their San Pellegrino aranciata (Orange) water. Yummo!

Again, inspired by Mark Bittman, I made my own baked ziti recipe, this one deliciously rich with the use of dried porcini mushrooms, shiitake mushrooms, and a three-cheese blend with tomato sauce.

The picture looks this way because I was having too much fun after midnight in Photoshop, attempting to make this photo look old. It’s a baked casserole, after all.

Create the sauce: I started with EVOO and a bunch of chopped fresh shiitake mushrooms. Add garlic. Sauté, then add a little red wine. Add the now soften porcini (you poured boiling water over them, didn’t you?), and then finally added chopped tomatoes. Muir-Glen for me, fire-roasted.

I also added one Niman Ranch frozen italian sausage link I had. I sliced it into thin disks.

After the sauce tightens up, add most of the porcini water (minus the sandy bits), and reduce more. In total, I probably cooked the sauce for about 25-35 minutes. Take it off the heat.

Boil your salted water, and cook the ziti or penne. (I prefer the penne rigate by DeCecco.) Add them to the sauce, stir, and then stir in about half of your cheese - as much as you like. I used a three-cheese blend from Whole Foods of Asiago, Parmesan, and Fontina. After the stuff all gets put into a baking dish, cover with more cheese.

So this ought to be a flavorful little dish… three cheeses. Garlic, mushrooms, and italian sausage. Hmmm.. yes, it turned out quite well.

As usual, I served a salad. And you get the benefit of full color this time around.

A very small bed of red-leaf lettuce formed the bottom, undressed. The main stars were the chopped Hanover tomato and avocado. Honey, Dijon mustard, mayonnaise, a pinot grigio vinegar, and EVOO made up the dressing. The tomato and avocado got dressed, and then salted and peppered. The lettuce was just the backdrop.

On the side, two generous croutons that had been topped with a basil pesto before being toasted for 7 minutes in the oven.

Messygood.

Mama Cucina is located at 4028 Cox Rd in Glen Allen, VA in the “Shoppes of Innsbrook.” I’ve probably been there now 7-9 times, and my last trip pretty-much summed up my experience with them over the years. Each visit has been surprisingly consistent.

MC seems like a place you might dress-up for, but it is positioned next to a Dairy Queen, and you’ll see everyone from “business casual,” to shorts, and folks who actually put a new fresh button-down shirt going inside. During our visit on a busy Saturday night, we were able to wait outside for 15 minutes while a table opened up, sitting next to those eating banana splits from the DQ.

I’ve never figured out MC’s menu, per se. The portions are gargantuan. But not in the sense of what you’d find at Maggiano’s Little Italy. M’s is about eating big, and sharing. I’d like to go to M’s with a big crowd, where we can share a number of dishes, and pile out plates with all of our favorites.

Instead, MC just serves giant portions. What I don’t like is the surcharge for sharing. I really dislike restaurants who want to charge you $3 or more dollars for the privilege of having your own plate. I ordered their Veal Margherita which was not very tomato-y at all. It is served in a pink cream sauce with black olives and artichokes.

My dining companion ordered a giant bowl of penne pasta with red sauce and mini meatballs. They must have put close to a pound of pasta into that bowl. The bowl it comes in looks like something you’d be served when someone announced “this is your last meal.”

Service was okay, except that the soft drinks come in small glasses, watered down (cokes look like iced tea, and iced tea looks like dirty water). Getting a refill was possible, but only after very measured and calculated mini-sips had run their course. The atmosphere was noisy. They do fit a lot of folks into a small space. I never felt crowded, however the noise level on a busy evening might be off-putting to some.

My entrée came on a “silver platter,” likely something you’d pull out for a cocktail party. A bed of farfalle pasta (not indicated on the menu) lined the large platter, and 3 or 4 pieces of veal were spaced evenly across this bed. The black olives (no more than 10) looked nice on the plate, but they lacked flavor. The sauce, it lacked flavor. It was cheesy and there, but even copious shakes of the salt shaker couldn’t coax flavor from that sauce. The veal was cooked well, and the artichokes offered a nice texture, but the platter, as as a whole, was disappointingly bland.

MC serves a “family style” salad - dressed in a wooden bowl - with their entrees. I like the salad, but it was ultimately too small. For such “appropriate” portions of salad, why are the entrées 3 times the volume? It was “just enough” salad. The same for the bread. They served an oil and herb-doused two slices of toasted bread alongside their signature flavored olive oil. The olive oil dipping setup is delicious - yummy in fact. But the bread was already so greasy that one pull of it from the two slices that hadn’t been adequately sliced left my hands belittered with crumbs and an oily coating that even their thick cloth napkins couldn’t wick away (to my ultimate satisfaction). I considered going to the restroom to wash my hands, except that after 10 wipes with the napkin I’d given up and decided I could proceed without soap and water.

The dessert course was tiramisù. Their version is light, but again, long enough for three diners to consider it a full and robust dessert. The chocolate sauce on top seemed rather un-authentic, and despite its refreshing lightness, it was a tad too sugary. It was the highlight of the meal, perhaps, after too small a salad, too greasy bread, too small a beverage, and too bland an entrée had already passed over our table.

I’ve had better meals at MC but this one kind of did it for me. Some may argue that their prices are a steal for the amount of food you get. I took a giant portion of my farfalle home, and when it was dressed with a more flavorful mushroom and tomato sauce, it was a winner upon re-heating.

Restaurants like these likely are considering two things: flavor vs. authenticity. I’m guessing MC is trying for authenticity, but I can tell you, I doubt any chefs in Italy are using a plastic bottle of chocolate sauce on top of their desserts. MC has a good formula: giant portions, included salad with a good dressing and dynamite tasting bread. If they only focused a bit on the flavor quotient and up-size their drinks to match the entrées, they’d be great.