Layne’s Wine Gig Presents
Two Italian Restaurants
By Layne V. Witherell
SOLO ITALIANO
100 Commercial St., 4:30 – 10 p.m., closed Monday
https://www.soloitalianorestaurant.com
This is about the wonderful meal that we had during the most recent Maine Restaurant Week. But it is a lot more. Namely, it is also about who makes the cut for the top 75 best restaurants according to the Portland Press Herald’s food critic.
The fact that Solo didn’t make the cut is due to several things: the adorableness factor – Smalls and Friends & Family being prime examples – together with the craving for newness, including the hot new “it” girl right off the local red carpet. Newness is all.
Solo Italiano has been here for a while and is an authentic version of local modern northern Italian at its best. How do we know? When in Rome we dined at Clorofilla Cucina e Distillati. Solo is cool, local, and magnificent. Close your eyes for a moment at Solo and you are in Rome. Authenticity is all.
Maine Restaurant Week’s presentation was a tasting menu of five courses for $55.00 with an eye-popping wine list that is both Italian encyclopedic and the same prices as Rome to boot. How many times have I heard, “Gee, they are so much cheaper over there.” I collect restaurant wine lists and scrutinize them like a biblical scholar looking over scripture and will gladly compare a myriad of lists. Solo’s list hovers at an average per bottle price of $50.00-$60.00 for an authentic selection.
We desperately try as Americans to break away from Italian as a thick mound of pasta smothered with mom’s red sauce, but we can’t. The courses here aren’t large but they are Roman, true to type.
THE MENU
Italian dinners can vary from one to eight courses. This Maine Restaurant week gem was five.
- Antipasto: Salmon rillette on crostini.
- Insalata: Organic greens with shaved pecorino (the cheese, not the wine), carrots, radish, and a rosemary-olive oil dressing.
- Primi: Mafaldine pasta with creamy walnut pesto. You are in famous territory here with Solo as they have taken home the “pesto gold,” and it shows in this variation on a classic.
- Secondi: Braised veal belly – pictured and delicious. Very much out of the ordinary.
- Dolce: Blood orange torta.
THE WINE
A note on wines by the glass. Start with anything by the glass but pinot grigio. There are just too many great local Italian grape choices. Ask, or just fall into a delightful glass of pecorino (the grape, not the cheese).
The wine decisions for all the courses hovered on a Ribolla Gialla, a northern Italian grape from Fruili, an indigenous white that would, with its acidity and nutty flavors pair well with everything from the salad to the pasta and veal belly but wouldn’t provide excitement.
We chose instead a classic little fruity Dolcetto, Altre Vie Dolcetto d’Alba (Anfora), $50.00 per bottle. Dolcetto means “little sweet one” and it is usually fruity not sweet, the Italian version of a Beaujolais, working softly with all dishes. Dolcetto is the background singer accompaniment to the majestic wines of Barolo and Barbaresco from Piedmont in northern Italy.
What we got was a ringer. I love ringers. Especially ones that work. “Vibrancy and brightness with a layering of funk” are my operative words, as the winemaker Frederico Scarzello works twelve acres of land in the storied Barolo region to bring out the best rustic simplicity in his grapes. Either biodynamic hipster winegrowing is becoming more user friendly, or I am becoming a softie.
The wine went exceedingly well with each of the four dishes and provided center stage entertainment, complex flavors, and excitement for half the price of the storied Barolo. Any wine list that features around forty excellent, well-chosen regional wines hovering around $50 gets my vote. Dining is still all about food and wine as an experience. “Wine is the intellectual part of the meal,” as novelist Alexandre Dumas once put it.
LEEWARD
85 Free St., Tues., Wed., Fri., Sat., 5-9 p.m.
https://leewardmaine.com
The original title of this column was going to be “Leeward.” Problem. Every time there is a major award whiff in the air for this place reservations close tighter than the toughest clam shell. So, you wait and hope the resy.com gods smile on your sorry little local self.
The other evening, they did, and they are worth the wait. The dining room is more modern than the rustic brick of Solo. Were it not for the menu, it could be practically any modern, no frills, pared down dining setting.
STARTERS
The crispy artichoke with capers and rosemary was right out of Rome. The butter lettuce salad with blue cheese, radish, herbs, and lemon cream vinaigrette made lots of points with satisfying flavors and textures. The Evesham Wood Pinot Gris, Eola-Amity Hills, Oregon, $15.00 glass was light mineral and fruit spot on. Wine is about context. I knew the winery’s founder, the late, unpretentiously great Russ Rainey, who was a giant in the young emerging Oregon wine world of the 1980’s.
We lucked out having Paige Buehrer in the house, General Manager and Wine Director. Oh, Paige, I have been saving up all those wine questions for you. This is one eclectic list ranging brilliantly far outside the boundaries of Italian, or for that matter even Europe. You can take the plunge from Berkeley to the Niagara region to South Africa. Why are Barnard, Fletcher, or Shelbourne, Vermont wines sprinkled generously about? Paige, we found is from Vermont, and seems occasionally to be homesick.
Please, Paige, list one of these by the glass so we can indulge as well. Would it no doubt pair well with the artichokes?
THE MAIN EVENT
Beef & Pork Ragu Bolognese over house made Rigatoni pasta for me. One of their famous mouth-watering dishes. Tuscan pork ragu over crispy, pillowy polenta was a huge hit with the Mrs., though there was a lot of sharing.
THE WINE
Usually, I don’t exceed the fifty- or sixty-dollar world for a column, but it was my birthday, and this list combines choices that are wildly eccentric, new wave combined with the time worn classics. Since we had already done a hipster journey at Solo, it was time to sink into the Italian comfort zone.
RUBINELLI VAJOL VALPOLICELLA RIPASSO CLASSICO, VENETO, 2014, $78.00 bottle.
Sadly, most wine lists feature vintages about a minute old. Restaurant costs, storage, distributor inventory, not to mention winery accountants’ bottom line anxiety all add up to lists full of 2022 vintages that should be enjoyed in the next several decades, not now. In fact, 2014 is perfect for a restaurant.
Rubinelli is a famous producer in northern Italy using (here is your sommelier question of the week) Corvina, Rondinella, and Croatina grapes as the blend. No decanting is needed. It opens in the glass to accompany their acclaimed food. It is created with regular Valpolicella being poured over the spent skins of Amarone (a wine of both majesty and price) creating an elegant wine for our dishes.
NEXT VISIT
Paige has serious wine chops and frankly I didn’t know we would run into someone quite like her. There is such an array of eclectic flavors on this list that it will make me forget the homework exploration altogether. You choose. But please, open the conversation with that missing Vermont wine by the glass.
