Beacon Hill's quiet corner of Italy

When it comes to who orders what, my friends are amusingly predictable. If there's roast chicken on the menu, I know from long experience that Mary Anne will order it. Joe will take steak or another variation of red meat. Pizza or pasta in any form will call to Tina like a siren. Luckily, Panificio has all of these, and many other temptations to boot. The night after the big snow, we stopped by this bakery/cafe for dinner. Beacon Hill was a quiet hamlet, the Charles Street restaurants open and brightly lighted but not busy.

We found Panificio warm but nearly idle, save one table of six celebrating a birthday. A waiter pushed two tables together for our feast. The specials that night included lobster cioppino, baked penne with sausage, and mussels with chorizo. The top draws on the regular menu, we're told, are gnocchi in marinara with roasted vegetables and pulled chicken fettuccine.

Panificio was a bakery for years before adding lunch service, and just two years ago the hours extended to dinner, complete with beer and wine. The Italian flavor is enhanced by the decor of red tiles, red leather cushions, and red walls. Candle light from stained-glass votives at each table make it remarkably romantic for a bakery.

With Italy on our minds we had to have antipasto ($9.95), a large plate of kalamata olives, hot peppers, slices of tomato, crisped prosciutto that tasted pleasantly of bacon, and fresh mozzarella. Tuna salad with capers and red onion and mixed greens covered in balsamic dressing were savory additions, and made the plate seem more like salad than antipasto. We loved it.

Over the years, Mary Anne has eaten a lot of roast chicken, so when she praised the herb-marinated half bird she had ordered, we all took heed ($12.95). The skin wasn't crispy but the drumstick was succulent with a faint taste of rosemary.

Ricotta, mascarpone, mozzarella, kalamata olives, tomatoes, and spinach. It wasn't a pizza, it was a trip to the market stalls in Florence ($13). The crust was thin but not like parchment. Tina raved and raved, but the rest of the table found the fresh spinach undercooked, the tomatoes woefully pink. The meaty olives and fresh-tasting cheese made up for the flaws, though.

Fresh mozzarella shows up a lot on the regular menu and the nightly specials, and it's a welcome sight. On penne in marinara with Italian sausage that tasted sweetly of tarragon, hunks of mozzarella melted into the dish and made up for the undercooked pasta ($15).

Wild mushroom fettuccine was overcooked, but the hunks of chicken, primarily white meat, were perfectly rendered and infused with the taste of mushrooms ($13.95). Shavings of parmesan took the meal to the outskirts of decadence. I could have this again, and in fact did have enough for leftovers. All the portions here are generous.

If you are trying to diet, don't order the salmon nicoise ($12). Pan-seared salmon arrives on a bed of field greens in red pepper vinaigrette, with crisp, perfectly cooked green beans (the menu says string beans), kalamata olives, red onions, thick slices of avocado, and a hard-boiled egg. The salmon skin is crisp and nutty-tasting, and taken with a bite of avocado reminded one of us of sushi (part California, part salmon skin roll).

A smattering of items here are above the Cheap Eats price point, but for a splurge the 8-ounce sirloin steak we spied two tables away looked like a good bet ($15.50). It's a hearty plateful, with potatoes flecked with bacon and leeks, and a side of roasted vegetables.

We were too shy to ask the couple next to us if they liked the pies on offer for dessert one night; they were deep in conversation. They left clean plates in their wake, so we ordered blueberry pie to see if it was as good as it looked ($5.50). The crust wasn't flaky but it was far from dense, and the tiny blueberries balanced right on the line between tart and sweet.

When we looked up from our own clean pie plate, the place was full: the clientele young and the energy pleasing. Everyone looked fed and fueled for a night of clubbing, or shoveling.