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.

it's september

Emmanuel and I went out for a post-birthday dinner last Saturday with some friends. we went to Ristorante Milano in the Russian Hill area. parking was a bitch, we circled around for 15 minutes until we chanced upon a parking lot that charges $10 (what a deal!). the attendant asked us if we were headed to a particular restaurant and we told him, he said it would only cost us $7 (an even better deal!). when we got to the restaurant, our four friends were already seated but where we were to seat, our section was not ready.

we shared the sardines as starters - worth every bite. for our entrees, emmanuel ordered the lamb chops and I ordered the pork medallions with soft polenta. the others ordered pasta dishes. food was good overall but the portions were on the small side: emmanuel had two chops with one polenta triangle, two cubes of roasted potato and some other vegetable; the pasta in cream sauce looked gooey but good; the vegetarian pasta dish was somewhat lackluster. the rosemary focaccia that they serve with olive oil was excellent. service was good though a little harried. as each person finished their meal, the plate was whisked off the table. I like to take my time eating so this kind of service was a somewhat disconcerting. I tried to hold on to my fork afraid that if I set it down, my plate would disappear. the place is small and they were quite busy and they obviously want to turn their tables quickly, but service like that was a major turn-off to patronize them again. I would recommend but I won't be back.