New take on old-world Italian
In his authoritative "The Food of Italy," the late Waverly Root used a mere 12 pages to discuss Umbria and its specialties, while the region of Liguria rates more than 30 and Emilia-Romagna a whopping 110. Root emphasizes that Umbria does, however, boast hearty meat dishes, and that it claims a culinary distinction -- from its hillsides come truffles.
When Umbria the restaurant opened early last fall, a press release touted the hardy peasant cooking that it served in a rustic setting. That's not quite the case, however, in this remake of the former Trattoria Il Panino, engineered by owner Frank dePasquale and his management partners, Marisa Iocco and Rita d'Angelo. (Michael Scelfo, chef de cuisine during my reviewing process, left Umbria as this section was going to press.) With Iocco as executive chef, the dishes are certainly robust, authentically Italian, and mostly delicious. But rustic they're not -- though black truffles, truffle cream, and showers of mushrooms of all kinds figure prominently, true to the dishes' Umbrian roots.
It's hard to decide when arriving at Umbria whether it's a scene or just confusing. One evening in December, we arrive for a 7:30 reservation and are still waiting for a table an hour later at the bar. The restaurant is on the first floor, a smallish room dominated by an open kitchen in one corner, with black-shirted cooks and waitstaff bustling around. A large bar with those now-ubiquitous little tables with stools covers another corner, giving the tables in the front a sort of squashed feeling, as waiters try to wend their way through the crush on a busy night. Coursing through and around this are people on their way to Ultra nightclub and lounge upstairs, and private dining rooms, located on floors 2 through 5. "Sergio's birthday party" announced a sign at the front one night, as partygoers pushed by our little table near the bar through glass doors to an elevator. The noise in the room on a Friday night in January comes mostly from those traveling through; the dining room is half-empty, and it's difficult not to feel you're missing the real party.
However, the food brings the attention right back to the plate. I order a mini osso buco with polenta, a combination that sounds a little heavy for an appetizer -- and it is. But the intensely meaty and tomato flavors make the dish well worth trying, despite the slightly lumpy polenta. Quail is wrapped in prosciutto and grilled on a spit so the little bird, stuffed and showered with herbs, sports a golden, crackly skin and moist flesh. Underneath is a soft pillow of farro cooked like risotto, enriched with creamy mascarpone infused with truffle oil.
The antipasti can be subtle, too. The traditional mozzarella and tomato salad is revised for winter by balancing well-salted cheese with marinated tomato slices, a few cherry tomatoes, and a few spears of asparagus. The salad is a little out of sync with the seasons but shows a welcome light touch. Caesar salad has a good garlicky dressing and added punch from salty, fried sardines.
Octopus salami won attention as the most unusual appetizer; its flesh is pounded thin to resemble salami, then marinated in vinaigrette. With it comes a delicious Italian potato salad with green olives and aioli bearing a strong punch of garlic. I'd gladly eat the potato salad daily, but the octopus, except for its fascinating looks, has little taste, somehow not conveying enough of the flavor of the vinegary marinade.
Iocco knows her pasta, as evidenced at the old Galleria Italiana, which she and d'Angelo owned near the Theater District. (Iocco is also the chef and d'Angelo the manager of Bricco in the North End, which is also owned by dePasquale.) Here the pasta list stretches to 10 choices, all handmade on the premises. Ridged, green fusilli catches the sauce of wild mushrooms and olives, so that each bite seems more savory than the last. Then the aroma of truffle cream hits the nostrils and sweeps over the palate. The dish looks humble and tastes amazingly complex. Handmade linguini, called chitarra because at one time it would have been cut with guitar strings, is tossed with wild boar braised into a hearty Bolognese sauce. It's a marvelous winter dish, something to stave off the cold. Umbrichelli ravioli has a savory-sweet filling of shredded roast duck confit and chunks of roasted apple. The saltiness of the confit offsets the honeyed elements, making the dish intriguing rather than cloying. The seasonal goodies -- truffles, mushrooms, chestnuts -- are reprised one evening in a special of beautifully cooked risotto with silken textures.
Sometimes the exuberance of the flavoring gets out of hand. Rabbit, with grilled loin, sausage, and confited leg, is another worthy stick-to-your-ribs dish in its tomatoey sauce (that also tastes of truffles). But arugula underneath the rabbit seems to have been seasoned with an entire shaker of salt, distracting from the taste of the meat. A T-bone set on its side towers above the plate, startling in its gargantuan size. Sauced with gorgonzola and accompanied by spinach and mashed potatoes, the steak is more tantalizing in looks than taste; it's a little fatty and rather insipid.
Lee Napoli creates Umbria's desserts, and her lyrical way with anything sweet makes them well worth expending calories. Raspberry gratini looks like a puffy golden puddle of zabaglione studded with raspberries, but has such a delicate, almost floral flavor that three of us fight for last bites; the orange-mango sorbet with it adds a clean zip. Goat cheese panna cotta, from an earlier menu, is an interesting idea, but the mascarpone-like substance doesn't really taste like panna cotta. However, a chocolate-hazelnut torta is rich and dense and thoroughly satisfying.
The best elements of Umbria involve all the ingredients made onsite, from the pasta to all the smoked and cured meats to the ice creams. You notice it when you taste a dish like amatriciana, for instance. Made with fettuccelle, pancetta, onions, and tomatoes, it's a dish found in almost any Italian restaurant -- but Umbria's version stands out, subtly but notably. That attention to authenticity, along with some good cooking, gives Umbria its distinction.
