birthday dinner

yesterday was emmanuel's birthday. fortunately, he was able to get the night off and we had dinner at our new favorite neighborhood restaurant, Bellanico. for a rainy and cold night, the restaurant was quite busy. there was a wait for a table but there was room at the bar. we prefer eating at the bar since there is more room to spread out. we each had a glass of French bubbly whilst we perused the menu.


well, what did we eat? for starters, we shared the selection of cicchetti, basically bar food. served on a nice platter, it had fried sicilian green olives (just ok), crochetti di riso (crispy on the outside and cheesy on the inside), beet-gorgonzola and walnut crostini (wonderful combo), country pate crostini (lovely pork flavors), shrimps over white beans (rich, creamy and delicious), and a fried meatball with mint sauce (yummm).


then we shared a pasta course: lumache, wild boar ragu, treviso radicchio, grilled onions and ricotta impastata. what a dish! the bitterness of the radicchio went well with the richness of the boar ragu. my only peeve was that the ricotta was cold but otherwise a very good dish.

for our mains, i had the pancetta wrapped sturgeon and emmanuel had the pork loin chop. the sturgeon was moist and combined well with the saltiness of the pancetta. the pork chop was grilled perfectly, slightly pink closer to the bone.

nice wine list and quite reasonable. we ordered the Mirabile 2006 Nero d'Avola from Sicily. though it was listed under the 'Bold Reds' section, we found that it was not quite bold enough.

we've been here three times and each time we left happy and full.