THE ROMANCE IS BACK: at Trattoria di Monica. |
I can do North End nostalgia with the best of them. It’s all yuppies now. The old spirit is gone. Nothing is like it used to be. But then I walk into a tiny restaurant full of big flavors, and the romance is back. Trattoria di Monica is still mostly under the radar because it’s an offshoot of Monica’s (now on Richmond Street), along with Monica’s Mercato (on Salem Street). But this time the Mendoza brothers (Monica was their mother) have truly hit their stride. The trattoria is a teensy storefront with what looks to be an abbreviated menu of appetizers and pasta-based entrées. In the old North End tradition, this is augmented inside with a long list of daily specials, and even blackboard specials on wine. Also in the old North End tradition, the prices run up on the appetizer and wine specials, but not badly on the entrées. So it’s a value restaurant if you can stick with menu appetizers or go straight to the entrées and stick to a glass of wine from the list. As I found on two visits, however, splurges are sometimes worth it.
For example, a recent special, an antipasto appetizer ($20), featured three kinds of fresh mozzarella, each paired with a cured meat and a vegetable. One revelation for me was mozzarella burrata, with a mozzarella center and fresh cream. A hunk of this with Genoa salami and chunks of roast eggplant was a slice of heaven. But so was a piece of smoked fresh mozzarella with mortadella and tomato, as well as a piece of buffalo mozzarella with prosciutto and roasted red pepper. You could split this appetizer among two or three people to justify the expense. I would hate to have missed it.
On the other end, a special bruschetta ($15) had only a couple of toasts topped with excellent fresh tomatoes, cheese, and basil — not that much better than the $6 and $9 regular-menu bruschettas. You will want some appetizers, as the breadbasket is a crusty Tuscan bread (a little more salty than in Tuscany), and the olive-oil cruet is nothing special.
With entrées, the price gap is smaller, and the specials have more protein. Almost all the pasta is homemade and exceptional. Fettuccine al nero ($23), for instance, is black-ink pasta with an unmistakable homemade chew, done up in a creamy pesto sauce (a genuine regional specialty, not an American elaboration) with lots of shrimp. If it’s available, go off the menu with a recent special on veal bracioletini ($25); the underlying pasta is fat, soft spirals like blimp spaghetti, as comforting as the best gnocchi. The veal roll has a lot of garlic added to the cheese inside, but what really makes this dish unusual is that prosciutto is wrapped around the outside, so it crisps like bacon and better flavors the marinara sauce in which it’s braised. Richer, still, is the tomato-onion-pepper sauce produced by a slow-cooked lamb-shank special ($25). Here the pasta was tortellini stuffed with potatoes and a little sage, like glorified pierogies.
