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Type: Italian
Good choices: Shrimp scampi with risotto cakes, gnocchi in marinara sauce, chicken Madeira, sirloin steak tips, tiramisu.
Hours: Sunday and Monday, 4 p.m.-9 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday 11:30 a.m.-9 p.m., Thursday 11:30 a.m.-9:30 p.m., Friday 11:30 a.m.-10:30 p.m., Saturday 4 p.m.-10:30 p.m. Bar is open until 11:30 p.m. every night.
Credit cards: Amex, Visa, MasterCard.
Access: Street-level entry and seating.
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MANDO'S ITALIAN BISTRO
1388 Hancock Street, Quincy Center
(617) 479-1900
Restaurant reviewed 04/18/98 by Adam Pertman
Last things first, because the taste of the tiramisu still lingers: The desserts at this delightful new restaurant are terrific. In fact, it would be tempting to recommend that really frugal eaters polish off their dinners at home and travel to Mando's Italian Bistro just for a $3.50 final course. All the offerings are delicious, but the best are the baked-in-house cannoli and the tiramisu. The latter is made just the way it's supposed to be, and almost never is. Its lady fingers are saturated with rum and its cocoa is just sugary enough to delight the palate but not so sweet as to overwhelm it.
But it's worth getting the full culinary experience at Mando's, while savoring the thought of what's coming last. Indeed, only six months after it was opened by a pair of businessmen/brothers with no restaurant background, most of Mando's food has attained a high standard.
Even the priciest of restaurants often miss on seemingly straightforward preparations, dressing them with so many flavors as to detract from their inherent taste. But chef Steve Sullas gets dishes like his appetizer of shrimp scampi with risotto cakes ($7.95) right, offering the combination with light garlic butter and white wine sauce.
Similarly, velvety potato gnocchi - $9.95 for an entree portion large enough to satisfy two as a side dish - needed nothing more than a few ladles of fresh marinara and a dash of romano cheese, and that's all it got. And the sirloin steak tips ($9.95), served with garlic mashed potatoes, a vegetable or pasta, were among the most succulent we've tasted; any frills would have been distracting.
Mando's bears the nickname of the father of the restaurant's owners, Larry and Anthony Agnitti. Armando Agnitti emigrated in 1945 from Abruzzi, Italy, and spent most of his adult life as a salesman for Grossman's lumber. With the opening of his sons' restaurant, though, he looks like he's finally found his real calling at age 64; in the vernacular of another culture, he's a schmoozer.
Almost every night, Mando wanders the floor of his namesake business, a casual-elegant place with cherry-stained furniture and beautifully hand-sponged walls. By all accounts, he is a big reason many locals have become regulars here. Not only do they enjoy their meals, but they are made to feel part of an extended family.
Many of the dishes here exceed the $12 cheap-eats limit (though most only by a buck or two), but an array of very affordable fare is offered. The selections range from the obligatory thin-crust pizzas for $5.95 to $7.95 - the grilled chicken with sun-dried tomatoes and mushrooms was a particular hit - to all the appetizers, soups, salads, pastas, and chicken dishes.
One of the latter, the chicken Madeira, was a multisensory pleasure. It combined tender poultry tenderloins, mushrooms, and strips of sun-dried tomato with cheese-filled tortellini in a wine sauce; the visual surprise here was the green or red stripes (spinach or tomato) that ran across each piece of pasta.
The veal dishes on the menu, generally traditional selections from Italy, are priced toward the low end - $11.95 for most varieties and $10.95 for a pleasant version of veal parmigiana, served with a marinara sauce over your choice of pasta.
While most of the food we sampled was very good, we did encounter a few glitches.
Both the mashed potatoes and the homemade eggplant and sundried tomato raviolis (an appetizer for $6.95) were a bit too dry during one visit, though they were otherwise flavorful. The small, white-bread rolls served with our meals also left much to be desired in this day of superlative restaurant breads, and the lettuce-heavy side salads could have used more vegetables.
Those are fairly minor, easily remedied complaints. Moreover, they fade quickly as Mando's friendly smile fills the room and a stream of appetizing dishes flows to the tables.
Tips & hits
