Italian spots live up to their promise
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Type: Italian
Prices: Appetizers $10-$13; soups, pasta $10-$28; main courses $24-$33; desserts $7.50-$8.50.
Hours: Lunch: Mon.-Sat. 11:30 a.m.- 2:30 p.m. Dinner: Sun.-Thurs. 5:30-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat. 5:30 p.m.-midnight.
Credit cards: All major credit cards.
Access: Fully accessible.
Other establishments listed in this review:
TERRAMIA
98 Salem St., North End
617-523-3112
Type: Italian
Prices: Appetizers $12.50-$14.50; soups, pasta $8.50-$18; main courses $19-$29; salads $4-$5.50.
Hours: Dinner: Mon.-Fri. 5-10:30 p.m.; Sat. 4-10:30 p.m.; Sun. 1-10 p.m. Reservations accepted. No smoking.
Credit cards: All major credit cards.
Access: Two low steps.
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PIGNOLI
79 Park Plaza, Boston
(617) 338-7500
Restaurant reviewed 02/04/99 by Alison Arnett
Searching out the new vs. keeping tabs on previously reviewed restaurants is one of my constant dilemmas. I'll review a restaurant fairly early in its existence and then it'll be years before I can return. But all that while, I'll be queried about the places I wrote glowingly about. "Is such and such a place still good; would you still recommend it?" The earnest callers seemingly think I check back weekly on the places they're interested in.
So this week I'm checking up on two of my favorite Italian restaurants, ones that I recommend repeatedly to callers and friends.
Pignoli opened in summer '94 and was a mere stripling when I reviewed it that September. Chef de cuisine Daniele Baliani, under the guidance of owner Lydia Shire, hadn't quite hit his stride. But there was an excitement there, a frisson, a sense of future rewards.
A little more than four years later, dining at Pignoli feels just right: Baliani's food evokes a stylish sort of comfort, and his wit and intellect, apparent both in the menu's written words and in the cooking, bring a smile to one's lips.
A selection of antipasti shows off his classic bent. A little selection of olives, folds of prosciutto that melt in a salty pool on the tongue, a narrow sliver of frittata, and a delicious little tuna and potato salad. Nothing is overdone; nothing too big or too bold, all of the tastes meshing until we sigh with pleasure.
Many of the dishes bear fanciful titles: "I still fear greens even when they offer gifts" intones the menu, and Baliani explains he plays word games as his nod to his Columbia University education. The notation is intriguing and the dish even more so, with its delicious contrast of crisp and sharply smoky sardines against a creamy salad of tiny potatoes spiked with the piquancy of capers. An ethereal-looking soup of garlic, roasted slowly into sweetness, is actually full-bodied, laced with yogurt so that the sweet rush of garlic meets the tang of yogurt, producing a surprisingly mellow combination.
New-wave Italian restaurants sometimes downplay pasta, concentrating on the fanciful appetizers and hearty entrees. But Pignoli's pastas and risottos are beautifully and respectfully made. Rigatoni tossed with curried cauliflower, wilted spinach, and currants shows the Arab influence in Southern Italy. It's a a simple dish, and the big tubes of rigatoni look a little clumsy at first. But it's so good, each biteful making a reason for the next and next. Risotto is consistent here, the quality of its preparation making one with the restrained adornment of seared porcini with parmesan and black truffle oil more satisfying than than another risotto dish topped with a bronzed quail and fig juices.
Pan-seared trout is paired with an orange sauce just this side of burnt, which gives the citrus an amazing intensity, buttressed by a coleslaw marinated in lemon, lime, and orange juice. Another kind of intensity shines in a sauce for peppered venison that Baliani describes in a phone interview as containing roasted pepper, juniper berries, coriander, and ground coffee. The result practically hollers robust and makes even farm-raised venison taste wild.
Desserts at Pignoli are sometimes less interesting than other dishes, I think, but pastry chef Killian Weigand is an artist of the fruit tart: The pastry is perfect; the fruit glows like jewels and still tastes good; there's just enough filling but not too much. In short, a lovely ending to a lovely meal.
When it opened in 1993, Terramia represented a delightful break with its red-sauce North End neighborhood. More than five years later, chef and co-owner Mario Nocera and his little restaurant are still going strong.
Nocera, from Salerno in southern Italy, stays true to the Italian creed of using excellent ingredients and keeping the cuisine simple. And yet he and his chef de cuisine Joseph Tinnirello always find ways to surprise the diner. Using duck for carpaccio is a such a twist. The delicate sheets of raw meat are delicious, allowing the slight gaminess of the Muscovy duck to emerge without being overwhelming on the palate. The accompanying salad of thinly sliced Granny Smith apples and crumbled gorgonzola adds just the right balance of acidity and richness.
Duck is also used in an unusual ragu over tender folds of lasagnette with a shower of oyster mushrooms. The pasta dish is wonderfully satisfying, with the contrast between the wide noodles, piled loosely in the dish, and the crisp-edged sauteed mushrooms especially nice. But the duck flavor got a little lost in the ragu, I thought. Not so Terramia's game offerings, fairly rare on Boston menus although restaurants in Italy would routinely include game on fall and winter menus. Nocera combines locally raised boar, quail, and venison in a dish, adding a soft polenta enriched with Taleggio cheese and brightened with a sour cherry sauce.
The best attributes about Nocera's pastas aren't really the pasta, homemade and very good, or the sauces. When one eats open-faced ravioli with shellfish, the scallops and shrimp are so fresh and firm that one can still taste the sea. Nothing, not even a fairly rich lobster Mascarponecq sauce, overwhelms the seafood's flavor. One fanciful dish that Nocera said he can't take off the menu consists of lobster meat and radicchio formed into shrimp-shaped fritters with the barest breading and fried. Served with a glaze of balsamic vinegar laced with honey and topped with frizzles of fried leeks and carrots, the fritters are delicious and slighty oily, a guilty pleasure.
Nocera says he makes his own sausage at a neighboring butcher shop, giving it the extra spiciness he likes. This shows up in an unusual dish of pasta shaped into conical towers and stuffed with a mixture of finely chopped broccoli, ricotta, and sausage. We marvel at an elusive taste in the stuffing - horseradish, mustard? What is it? Nocera answers that it must be the wild fennel he brings back from Italy. The fennel, the shape of the pasta, the tomato and roasted red pepper puree are intriguing, but my companions and I are a bit nonplussed by the dish's oddity.
However, Terramia's strength flows not really from innovation but from the basis of good cooking, something Nocera refers to repeatedly in a phone conversation. It's food that's comforting because it's heartwarming and good. Striped bass - with a modicum of a tomato sauce, perfectly steamed carrots, a roast potato - is a plate that has nothing fancy but is great. I can't remember enjoying lamb as much as I did a simple rack of lamb served with sundried tomatoes and Gaeta olives. Each little chop, with a sprinkling of breadcrumbs and Parmesan, is tender and delectable, its sauce of a lamb juice reduction clean on the tongue.
Terramia's quality has kept up through the years and I feel justified in my recommendations. However, one other thing has stayed the same - still no dessert or coffee. I can do without the sweets but I have one request - couldn't Nocera and his staff squeeze an espresso machine in the little kitchen somewhere?
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